


Spiral of Memories

by SheepySeconds



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga)
Genre: (because i can never resist the allure of weird plot shit), Alternate Universe - Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Fusion, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Atem the Shinx, Gen, Weird Plot Shit, Yugi the Mareep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-10
Updated: 2019-08-21
Packaged: 2020-08-13 17:48:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 61,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20178268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SheepySeconds/pseuds/SheepySeconds
Summary: Yugi wakes up a Mareep in the desert with no memories. Luckily, the Shinx Atem is around to help guide him in this strange new world of Pokemon.(Yugi just wishes he knew why this all felt so familiar—)





	1. The Sandstorm

  
(some cover art by [maxhpart!](https://maxhpart.tumblr.com/post/186910271398/now-go-onwards-to-the-world-of-pok%C3%A9mon-there)) 

* * *

_You seem to be the calm type. You're very compassionate and considerate, and you put friends ahead of yourself. You're so generous and kind-hearted that you can laugh, forgive, and forget when your friends make mistakes. But be aware that your compassion can sometimes get you in trouble, and lead you to making decisions like this! Don’t be afraid to stand up for yourself, okay?_

_So, a calm type like you... would be a Mareep!_

_Now, go onward to the world of Pokemon. There, you’ll find great adventure and great friends. Oh! But be careful— you’ll find a great amount of danger too. But don’t worry too much. You were the one who wanted this. So, go on! Stay smart! Stay brave! And be victorious!_

_So long as you do, when I see you again, you’ll have achieved all your wishes! _

_Won’t that be wonderful?_

* * *

“...tired... still miss... die...” 

“...I want... without... burden...”

“Is that final?”

“It is.”

He breathes, and it feels like dust chokes away his lungs. He tries to blink his eyes open, but he can’t think, he can’t breathe, he doesn’t know what’s happening to him. He reaches out for— for someone—

—his eyes snap shut again. He feels his consciousness fading out. He can’t hold on much longer.

He blacks out once more.

* * *

“I can’t believe this,” says a Shinx walking through the desert. It’s hot. He may have grown up in the desert his whole life, but he’d grown up near a _river_, darn it! When you grow up next to a river, he’d like to say, it’s fundamentally different from growing up right in the middle of the desert. “Town was supposed to be in this direction…”

He kicks an irritable paw. Around his neck, a pendant swings. “It’ll teach you responsibility! Well, thanks, Mahaad,” mutters the Shinx. “I’ve learned plenty of responsibility trying to find Waypoint Town on the edge of the desert with no guidance whatsoever. Getting lost in a sandstorm, that teaches me all kinds of responsibility.” There’s sand all in his fur, between his toes, _everywhere_. And he’s still not there. The Wonder Map he’d managed to buy is pointing him in the right direction, but his paws are _burning_. His Shinx paws. Which are made for this.

He’s pretty sure Mahaad had expected him to turn around by now, to be fair, and that coming home would be the lesson taught. The Obsidian Desert was as massive as it was unforgiving, and even desert people like his didn’t travel through it too often. Between the Mystery Dungeons, the sandstorms, and the long patches between safe places to rest, only the brave traveled through the Obsidian Desert.

Well, them, and the adventurers, and he knew he wanted to be one of those. He spat sand off his tongue. He was lucky, having found a safe cavern during the sandstorm. Even as a desert-adapted electric type like himself, electricity and sand did _not_ mix well.

As it was, he could barely read his map.

He glares down at the offending piece of paper. “All kinds of responsibility. It’s your fault if I get stuck in the desert and neither make it to town _nor_ back to the temple…” Waypoint town should be _just ahead_. Unless… he shakes the map, runs forward some. The marker for his own location barely moves. He groans and looks behind him. He’d gotten caught in another localized distortion of space and time, hadn’t he? Great. Just _great_. It isn't even a proper mystery dungeon, so he hadn’t noticed.

Great. Just great. Mahaad was laughing somewhere, totally correct as normal. He might as well just—

—his foot hits something static, and the jolt sends a shiver up his body. If it weren’t so undirected, he’d shock them back, but instead he stumbles back, shoving his map back into his bag, and sees… wool ? Wool, covered in sand and buffeted away on the ground.

“…what?” he says. He brushes aside dirt, ignoring the shocks of what was definitely unintentional— had he found a dead body?

No. The static electricity means…

Shinx yelps, digging the sand out as best as he can from around the mysterious Pokemon. It’s a Mareep. There’s a Mareep, unconscious in the sand.

“What’s a Mareep like you doing this far out?” mutters the Shinx. Luxray was a Pokemon that had adapted to be able to live in the desert, but many electric types hadn’t, and Mareep… honestly, even if this Mareep was an explorer, it would be unusual for him to be out here alone. Sand and electric types didn’t mix well. Neither did sand and anything with _ wool. _

He thinks he has a Reviver Seed somewhere… He reaches into his bag.

Mareep gasps. They stare each other in the eyes. (The Mareep’s eyes, the Shinx notes, are a lovely shade of violet.)

“Hey,” Shinx says. “Are you okay? I found you passed out here!” 

“Holy shit, you talk,” whispers Mareep.

“…well, yeah. Why… wouldn’t I?” He tilts his head. This guy… is kind of weird. “Did you hit your head in the sandstorm or something?”

“I…” starts the Mareep, “I don’t know. I don’t remember.”

“You don’t remember?” Shinx frowns. “You must have hit your head. Tell me what you remember.”

“I… I don’t _ know _,” Mareep says, and, oh, there are the beginnings of panic in his eyes. “I don’t remember— I don’t remember anything! What, who am I? I’m— I’m Yugi, but who’s that? I…” The Mareep groans and covers his eyes. Pauses. Looks at his paws. “…I’m— I’m not human?” There’s a hysterical note to his voice. “I’m supposed to be human!”

“Human?” says Shinx. He wants to ask if the Mareep is okay, but… he thinks he believes him. “You said your name was Yugi?”

“Yeah,” Mareep says.

“You’re a Mareep now, not a Yugi.”

“That’s— that’s my name, not species."

“Oh,” Shinx says. “Your nickname?” He feels himself turning a little red. “That’s… awfully forward of you.”

“_ What _ ,” the Mareep says, “ _ does that even mean. _ ” There’s an awkward pause. Shinx has… no idea how to deal with this situation, honestly. What does that even mean? More like, what does Mareep even mean? Amnesiac strangers aren’t Shinx’s strong suit…  
  
Mareep shakes it off. “And who are you?”

“I’m Shinx,” Shinx says, because Maree— Yugi is apparently a little slow. That, and amnesiac. He… can’t even imagine. “Are you sure you were a human? You aren’t a human now.”

“I’m sure.”

…he shouldn’t, but he believes him. There’s something in those eyes and that voice that’s hard not to believe. It’s also a totally impossible story that he can’t imagine dreaming up even if Mana had accidentally dropped something heavy on his head again. “Okay,” says Shinx. They stare at each other for a moment. Yugi coughs, and Shinx, quite suddenly, remembers: “I should get you to town.” He pulls back out his map back out. “Frankly, it might be easier for me to turn back around to the temple…”

A gust of wind blows by.

The map is lifted from where Shinx is holding it down to the ground.

Both Yugi and Shinx watch in horror as the map flies away.

“After it!” shouts Yugi, who, with uncertain footing on the sandy ground, scrambles to chase after the map. Shinx follows after as well, but it isn’t long until Yugi falls, thanks to having hooves that could not be _ less _ intended for desert sands, and Shinx, with genuine worry, turns around to help him up. They both watch in horror as the map drifts through a pair of desert trees. Trees that almost make an arc in the sky.

“Noooo,” whines Shinx, “it went into a mystery dungeon…”

“Come on, it can’t have gotten too far,” Yugi says. His expression is annoyed, blank.

“Do you even know how to fight?” Shinx asks, but Yugi does have a point. Even using the sun as guidance, navigating the desert is hard.

“Why would I have to fight?” Yugi asks, looking very uncomfortable.

“Come on,” Shinx says, “I’ll protect you, but I can’t get that map alone!” The two of them race between the trees and into the dungeon.

* * *

It’s disorienting.

Well, everything’s disorienting, but Yugi supposes that’s the side effect of suddenly having four legs and somehow maybe being shorter (he thinks, judging by how tall those trees were), and also not remembering how that happened, or really much of anything other than “I’m pretty sure I’m not supposed to be a tiny sheep” and “my name is Yugi (something)” and “I probably shouldn’t have just woken up buried in sand in the desert”.

But even if you remove those very disorienting things from the equation, Yugi feels like he’s just stepped into a maze.

Around him, desert trees make spiky, disorienting walls around him. He doesn’t think he could slip between them. A strange breeze flies through the air. He sees patches of water, if he looks close enough. They’re small, but they look far more present than they had five minutes ago, standing outside of the trees.

“Well,” says Shinx, “come on.” He starts to pad through the sand. “This is a Mystery Dungeon— a disturbance of time and space that creates… this. An endless maze. It changes every time you go in one.” He turns a corner. Yugi hurries after. “I normally try to avoid them… they aren’t very smart to go in alone, since they really hurt you if you faint in them. But supposedly, they’re where all the best treasure is.” From the sound of Shinx’s voice, the idea of treasure doesn’t excite him all that much.

“I… faint?” Yugi frowns, confused. “Are you prone to fainting?”

“…you really don’t know anything, do you?” Yugi would be offended, but not only is that… rather true… but Shinx doesn’t actually seem to be _ trying _ to insult him. 

“I do have amnesia.”

“Right,” says Shinx. “I don’t know how to explain this…” He walks down the hallway, sees another wall of trees, and sighs, losing his thought again. “_And_ we’re turning around.”

“Right,” says Yugi, and he follows Shinx for a bit. For all the scenery is twisted and disorienting, it _ is _ rather pretty. The sand, trees, and patches of oasis make a colorful maze. Above him, Yugi can see a burning sun— bright, but not so bright that it hurts. A breeze occasionally ruffles the trees, making a thin howling. If it weren’t specifically so maze-like, it would be a respite from the desert. The sand is almost cool here, after all, despite the burning sun.

“I don’t think this was on the map,” says Shinx, like this isn’t remarkable at all. “That means this place is new. They have been spreading…” Yugi would ask, but every question so far has just confused him more. Endless mazes caused by a disturbance of time and space, whatever a nickname was, _ fainting _. He wishes his head didn’t feel like someone had plucked all the important bits out of it; he would rather like to know why he thought he was supposed to have two legs and why he’d been half-buried in the desert. 

“Look out behind you!” Yugi ducks as something’s claw slashes right where his head had been a moment before. Yugi yelps, startled, as he turns around to see something green, and spiny, and round, and it has a face? _ Cacnea, _ his brain supplies, which, thanks, like that’s helpful at all. He jumps back. 

“Hello?” Yugi says, because _ Shinx _ can answer him, so why couldn’t this cactus… thing?

Cacnea doesn’t answer, instead shooting spines at him and _ oh gods they’re all sticking to his wool. _

“Attack back!” Shinx shouts from behind him.

“Why?” Yugi says. “_ How? _”

“Headbutt them!”

“I don’t know that move!” and okay _ that’s _ the first five words out of his mouth wow okay it’d be nice if he could manage to say anything that makes _ sense. _He scrambles backwards again, shuddering as the spines dig into his skin. (You’d think the wool would protect him better.

“I don’t mean the move!” Shinx says. “Just ram into them!”

Yugi doesn’t like this plan. Yugi doesn’t like this plan at _ all. _ He puts effort into it anyway, jumping forward and slamming his hooves into the Cacnea, who falls backwards. “Why aren’t you helping?” Yugi says desperately as the thorny enemy stumbles back.

“I can’t get around you fast enough,” Shinx says, “but you’re doing great.” His tone of voice is bland, and Yugi kind of hates him.

The cactus thing hits Yugi in the face with one of its arms and it _ stings _ . Yugi jumps forward and hits it with his hooves. The cactus thing steps back, then stumbles before staring at Yugi a moment and glaring and Yugi can _ feel _himself withering. 

“It sure doesn’t feel like that?” Yugi says.

“Hit it one more time!” Shinx says. Yugi does so and watches it fall over, knocked out. Yugi stares. 

“That happened,” Yugi says quietly. “Is… are they okay?” His legs tremble. Did he just stomp a guy to death?

“They’ve just fainted,” Shinx says. He pauses, and walks closer to Yugi. Yugi can't tell what he's feeling. “They’ll be fine.” Yugi still isn’t sure what that means, but the same part of him that said ‘that cactus-ball thing was a Cacnea’ and ‘you don’t know Headbutt’ says ‘it will be fine’, so Yugi’s going to listen for now, even as they step past the Pokemon that seems to be being swallowed up by the sand beneath them. “They’ll be kicked out of the dungeon to… somewhere. Or perhaps vanish. Pokemon in mystery dungeons are strange. There are normal Pokemon, but most of the Pokemon will just attack on sight.”

“Oh,” Yugi says, quietly. Everything is distant. “Great.”

“This dungeon is relatively small, so we should only run into a few on each floor,” Shinx continues. He tilts his head. “Will you be okay? You did get hit with a Poison Sting…”

“I don’t feel dizzy,” Yugi says, “I just feel terrified.” Shinx gives him a sideways look.

“…okay,” Shinx says. 

They go back to walking. Five minutes later, they run across another cactus-thing. This time, Shinx is in front of Yugi, and Yugi watches as tackles the Cacnea in one or two hits, none of which were nearly as awkward as Yugi’s. There’s some practice there. It’s still a little clumsy, but it’s far more practiced than Yugi’s awkward hitting the opponent with his hooves. When Shinx finishes, he huffs and turns to Yugi.

“It gets easier the more you do it,” he assures Yugi. “And you’ll be able to learn new moves as you go.”

“Okay. Okay.”

“I bet the map’s at the end of the dungeon,” Shinx says, “but we’ve got to walk to the end, anyway, my charm here won’t get us both out safely. Getting kicked out of a mystery dungeon for fainting _ hurts _ otherwise.”

Yugi falls back to quietly following Shinx, watching the charm the Pokemon wears around his neck as they walk. It’s a thin gold triangle with an eye on it.

For some reason, it fills Yugi with a feeling of both importance and dread. He puts it out of his mind.

* * *

The first time they reach a ladder, Yugi stares at it for several minutes. On the way, he’s been pricked by more cactus-things than he can count. (“There’s normally more variety,” Shinx had muttered, which Yugi’s not so sure is comforting.) 

“…we’re on a flat plain,” Yugi feels the need to point out.

“Mystery Dungeons are like this,” agrees Shinx cheerfully. “I told you, it’s a distortion of time and space itself.”

“I can believe that now."

* * *

Shinx has finished off most of the cactus-things for Yugi, but, with Yugi’s luck, the next Pokemon they run into isn’t one of the cactus things. It’s after they’ve climbed the ladder. Shinx had wandered across the twisted ground to pick up something he’d seen on the ground, some kind of berry, and Yugi was watching the entrance to the area they were in, and then Yugi yelped as he felt something _ chilly _ creep down his spine, like someone walking across his grave, or a bug crawling across his skin.

He looks.

It’s… a small blue creature with a very big green leaf on its head.

It’s way less intimidating now that he can actually see what it looks like; he has no idea why whatever it did made him feel like cringing to the ground. He hits it with his hooves, and the thing pecks at him with his beak-y face. (Lotad, that’s what it’s called, right. Yugi’s starting to feel like he’s remembering things he has no reason to know, which is terrifying in its own right, but at least he doesn’t have to guess what to call a Lotad anymore.)

“Shinx?"

“Coming,” shouts Shinx, “but— you should attack it! I don’t know how to use any electric moves yet!”

Yugi rather thinks this isn’t fair. Shinx is an electric type. “How do you know _ I _ know one?” Yugi shouts back.

“Because _ one of us has to_, and it will be super effective against Lotad!” That… sounds like it’s probably a good thing? Okay. Electric type move. Yugi thinks electrical thoughts, thinks electrical thoughts… He feels it then, like something concentrating across his wool. It’s not a human sensation, that’s for sure; he must have some kind of sense for this that he wouldn’t have had before. He shakes his head, and a small bolt of electricity hits the Lotad, and it faints.

“…I can shoot small thunderbolts,” Yugi says.

“Thunder Shock,” corrects Shinx. “Good job. That will make dealing with water types far easier, and there appears to be a few water types in this place.”

“In the desert,” clarifies Yugi.

“I think we’re in an oasis,” Shinx says. “If it weren’t twisted into a mystery dungeon, I’d be able to tell better.”

“Right,” Yugi says, uncomfortably, as Shinx comes back holding a berry.

“It’s tasty, and more importantly, it heals you from poison. With the Cacnea around, we’ll want one.” Are sheep supposed to eat berries? Stupid question, though, it looks delicious, and at this point, he should just stop asking these kinds of questions and just go with it, right?

* * *

They start swapping off. If it’s something like a Cacnea, Shinx takes it, but if it’s a water type like Lotad, Yugi deals with it by shooting electricity its way.

It still makes Yugi feel... something. Shaky, and cold, maybe. He doesn't have better words.

* * *

After about two hours, they reach… “An exit,” Shinx says. “And…” There it is— the map. It lies on a rock next to a surprisingly beautiful fountain of water, which forms a mist over the final floor of the mystery dungeon. Around it, trees bend towards the light. It’s cool, a light breeze still running through, and although it turns all the sand across Yugi and Shinx’s bodies to mud, Yugi is far more glad for the almost rain-like mist than he could possibly let on. Even in the mystery dungeon, he was getting hot.

“How do you know this is the end?” Yugi says.

“No ladder,” Shinx says, “and look— there’s an exit.” There is an exit, a small gap in the trees that opens to the wide desert.

“Right,” Yugi says. For a while, they just sit there. The fountain reflects the sun, like it’s full of rainbow sparks. It’s peaceful here. There are a few Lotad right there on the edge of the water, but unlike the Lotad in the dungeon, they don’t seem to have any interest in attacking. Instead, they float in the water, creating a comfortable, quiet mood. “I guess you just get a sense for these things, eventually, or something?”

“I wouldn’t know.,” says Shinx, unfurling his map. “I haven’t left home all that often.” He taps his feet. “I want to be an explorer, though. I want to see the world properly, for myself.”

“Oh,” Yugi says. “I guess I wouldn’t know about that, either..”

“I want to meet all the people,” says Shinx. “The world— it’s getting more dangerous. There are more and more mystery dungeons, and there are more and more bad Pokemon, being influenced by the imbalances in the world and in the Duality. I want to— to _ take on _ all that danger for myself.” He pauses. “My teacher told me that if I was confident I could take on the world myself, that I should try to make it to Waypoint Town by myself.” 

Shinx, Yugi realizes, has ruby red eyes. Somewhere in the back of his head, Yugi thinks this is unusual. Right now, there’s some kind of spark in them. Shinx opens his mouth for a moment, as though to say something else, but then closes it again, as though he’s thought better of it. Instead, Shinx gestures at Yugi to come look at the map.

They’re right by town. Behind them, a vast desert. Where they are now is now labeled with a simple “Gateway Oasis” marker. Yugi realizes that the mystery dungeon they just walked through must have a name now.

“You won’t have anywhere to stay, will you?” Shinx says.

“No,” says Yugi.

Shinx looks away. “…when I get to town,” Shinx says, “I was planning on registering as an explorer. There’s a guild outpost there. Explorers… they, well, explore. They help rescue Pokemon who become trapped in mystery dungeons or in the wild, and they help apprehend outlaws.” Shinx pauses. “I was going to apprehend outlaws, mostly, but also… see the world before I have to go home again.” There’s something there in Shinx’s voice— someone who’s tired of being trapped.

The rain from the fountain above them slowly drifts onto their muddy fur.

“I’ll get guild-approved lodgings. From what I’ve heard of Waypoint Town, probably just a tent, but…” Shinx pauses. “…you won’t have anywhere to stay, so for now, you can stay with me, okay? And… join my rescue team.”

“Rescue team?”

“Yeah. It’s what you call a team of explorers. A rescue team.”

A rescue team. Yugi likes that. A rescue team. 

Yugi likes that better than the idea of exploring, he thinks, the idea of rescuing people. A name like a rescue team… He’s muddy and sweaty and had just been shooting lightning at people not too many minutes ago, but this place is beautiful, and Shinx is talking to him properly, and Yugi thinks that if he’d done something like this specifically to help people… He’d do it again and again. It’s not just that, though. It’s also… Shinx sounds so trapped, when he talks of home, and he’d said he was going to town to be an explorer, but… hm. He sounds kind of lonely, doesn’t he? Besides, Yugi doesn’t have anywhere else to go. It’s not like he remembers how he got here, and Shinx has helped him a lot. What’s to say that Shinx won’t keep on helping him?

It’s not just that, though. It’s also… Shinx sounds so trapped, when he talks of home, and he’d said he was going to town to be an explorer, but… hm. He sounds kind of lonely, doesn’t he? Besides, Yugi doesn’t have anywhere else to go. It’s not like he remembers how he got here, and Shinx has helped him a lot. What’s to say that Shinx won’t keep on helping him?

“Okay,” Yugi agrees. Shinx shuffles his feet.

“If we’re going to be on a rescue team, I guess you should know my nickname.” There’s a tiny pause. “I already know yours, anyway.”

“Is that a big deal?” Yugi asks.

“Nicknames are personal names,” Shinx explains, “you need permission to call someone by it. Besides, mine has always been…” Shinx trails off, shaking his head like someone who doesn't care to recall what they were going to say in the first place. “…but if we’re going to be on a team together, it makes sense for you to know it.” He turns to Yugi. “Hi,” Shinx says, “I’m Atem.”

And in that moment, Yugi feels— he feels something. The snatches of an echo, maybe. Atem, Atem. There’s an echo in the back of his head, bouncing off the pendant Atem wears and those gem-red eyes. It shouldn’t, he thinks suddenly, be that easy, should it? He doesn’t know why he thinks that, though. It’s a name. Apparently a very personal name, but still, it’s a name. Why shouldn’t it be that easy to be told it? It’s a nice name. Atem, Atem— Yugi likes it. The something-like-a-memory, it bounces off something steel in Yugi’s head then drifts away before he can catch it.

“It’s nice to meet you, Atem,” Yugi says, and beams.

“Yeah,” Atem says, and it’s a bit more subdued. “It’s nice to meet you too, Yugi. I bet we’ll be a great team together.” 

Yeah. Yugi thinks so too.

They spend a few more minutes sitting under the mist together before Atem grabs up the map and turns to Yugi. “We should hurry, so we get to town before it gets too dark.”

“Yeah,” says Yugi. “Lets go.”

They walk past the fountain and out through the gaps in the trees, out to the burning desert. Behind them, the mystery dungeon shimmers. In front of them, on the horizon, is a town that is just within reach. Yugi and Atem walk towards town, leaving the vast desert far behind them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun facts about this chapter: I went "ah I should make the first dungeon a desert, that makes sense given the symbolism and stuff" and then IMMEDIATELY went "oh, shit, I can't do that, both of the starters are electric-types and that would just be a dick move," so I compromised.


	2. The New Team In Town

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The team arrives in Waypoint Town, meets an entire anime's worth of characters, and gets in at least one argument.

Waypoint Town sits where the desert starts to shift to something safer— dry, but not quite as dry. Harsh, but not quite as harsh. Lifeless, but not quite as lifeless. A river flows through the middle of it, and while it connects to the road out of the desert, it also connects to so many other rivers, and an ocean. Half of the buildings in the town are more ‘tent’ than ‘building’, and even the true buildings are painted in bright colors. They make the town from a distance look like a colorful blanket over the desert. Around town, someone’s put a great deal of effort into planting trees and redirecting parts of the river in order to make sure the town is protected from both winds and dry spells. In the center, there’s a tower, two large symbols painted on it.

“It’s the outpost for the Explorer’s Guild,” Atem explains. “I am… uncertain about the dragon symbol, but that badge symbol is a symbol of explorers.” Yugi thinks the dragon looks kind of familiar somehow. He keeps it in mind.

As they walk towards the town, the sun is setting. Across town, torches are being lit. It’s impressive, especially for a town made mostly of tents on the edge of the desert. As they get closer, Yugi can see the town gates. Gates might actually be a strong word, since it would be relatively easy to just walk around from either side, but there’s two torches on the side of the road, and they seem to indicate the place from where the road both properly starts and enters town. Near them, a colorful bird Pokemon wearing a badge is standing. The bird is red, and has intricate red-and-black wings. Yugi thinks for a moment. Oricorio?

Yugi feels… nervous, actually. He hadn’t expected that by following Atem he would come across guards. Other Pokemon, those Yugi expected, but… what if this town guard could tell that Yugi wasn’t a real Pokemon? It was a very silly worry, he recognized, but as the sun set and a chill started to settle over the sand, Yugi really didn’t want to get stuck out in the desert. Town looked well-lit, at least. The desert wouldn’t be. And in the desert, Yugi, Yugi would be alone, and, well, he didn’t really know Atem yet, but…

…he didn’t want to be alone.

He steps closer to Atem. The Shinx, at least, doesn’t seem worried. He’s walking as confidently as he did in the dungeon, or in the desert, or anytime Yugi has looked at him. Apparently, strange guards don’t matter much to Atem. Yugi can kind of admire that, really, the ability to not be remotely worried by strangers.

Yugi’s still worried.

They approach the Oricorio from the road. She lifts her head. “Oh, hello boys,” she says. “You coming into town?”

Yugi feels his anxiety tighten further.

“Yes,” says Atem.

“Well, can I have you step over there, make a mark with your footprint? So we got a record of ya. You got a place to stay?” Yugi looks over. There’s a strange muddy pit. Near it, there’s a sheet of paper. There are a few footprints lined up across it. There’s something written at the top. Yugi thinks it might be a date, but he doesn’t recognize the time periods being used to demarcate it. 

“Go on,” the Oricorio says, and Yugi carefully treads his paw through the mud as Atem does. They both record their footprint on the paper. “There ya go. Honestly, you’d think the law was after ya or something, from the way some of you Pokemon hesitate.”

Yugi feels the light fur on his legs stand on end.

“…that was a joke,” the Oricorio says. “Last time I’ll give  _ Seto _ a favor…”

“Wait,” Atem says. “You work for the guild? An Oricorio— are you Mai?”

“My nickname’s gettin’ known too, huh?” She laughs. “One day, Seto’ll start a trend… yeah, I’m Mai. You’ve heard of me?”

“A friend of mine was always super impressed that you manage to explore entirely solo as a single Oricorio.” Yugi’s lost now, but Mai must be an explorer. Like he and Atem were about to be, apparently. And Seto was…? “She was also impressed with how freely you shared your name, even among enemies.”

“Like I said,” Mai says, “Seto’ll start a trend one of these days. If you don’t got lodging, go talk to Grandpa.”

“…Grandpa?” Yugi says.

“A Kecleon, everyone calls him that because he’s old as sin, he runs the shop around here. Mokuba’ll get you proper lodging too, in the morning, if you’re joining the guild.” She taps her foot. “Go on, though, I’m almost done with guard duty for the night, and I’m more the adventuring type than the ‘sit around and hope someone walks by’ type, so I’d _really prefer_ _it_ if you didn’t delay me.”

“Alright,” says Atem. “Let’s go find this Grandpa.” He starts walking past the gates. Yugi scrambles to keep up again.

“Thank you!” he tells Mai. Then, he scrambles after Atem some more. 

Once they’re past the gates, they’re surrounded by colorful tents and cloths. Yugi’s impressed with how solid all the canvas buildings look. And the sizes! Yugi’s pretty sure he hasn’t seen such a variety of size in his life! Some of the tents look like they could hold entire giants in them, but some are smaller than even Yugi is, and he’s decently small at the moment! Now that he’s closer, he can see signs written in front of tents. A whole block of them, near the tower in the center of town, are labeled with “GUILD RELATIONS”. Yugi wonders if that’s where they’ll be staying eventually, or if it will be in the tower itself.

There are more Pokemon than Yugi ever saw in even the densest parts of the Dungeons, too. One goes by that’s huge, and made of rocks— an Onix— that’s so big that Yugi’s worried it will miss where they are and crush him and Atem! Outside the tents, Yugi sees several Pokemon with actual flames on their body, lighting up some remaining torches. (Chimchar, his brain provides for one. Charmander, his brain provides for another.) Most of the town is headed to bed, true, but Yugi still sees Pokemon after Pokemon— Dusclops, Psyduck, Turtwig, Pachirisu— pass by as he follows Atem.

“Where are we going?” he asks. “You don’t seem lost.”

“The shops must be in the buildings over there,” Atem says. “A shopkeeper everyone calls  _ Grandpa _ would have to be pretty established in town. There’s no way that he stays in a tent. Besides, call me crazy, but…”

Ah. Yugi sees what he’s talking about.

Up ahead, there’s a building shaped oddly like a lizard with a turtle shell. Yugi’s never seen any Pokemon like that, and his brain doesn’t provide the name of any, but the lizard without the turtle shell is unmistakably a chameleon. The only chameleon Pokemon Yugi knows of, at least, is a  _ Kecleon _ . It stands to reason that the… noticeably… carved roof probably belongs to a Kecleon itself. Yugi follows Atem through the streets towards the more permanent part of town. Here, the buildings are more made of stones or clay than they are made of canvas.  Most of the shops are closing up, but the Kecleon’s shop is still open, a somewhat old looking green Kecleon humming as he tidies up in the back. Yugi and Atem approach the shopkeeper. 

“Excuse me?” Yugi asks.

“Grandpa!” Atem exclaims, a bit louder. “We need somewhere to stay.”

“Ah, I mean, if you want,” Yugi quickly corrects, shooting Atem a glare as he does. Atem doesn’t look all that terribly repentant.

“Oh, hello there, young boys,” says the shopkeeper. “And who would you be?”

“This is Mareep,” Atem says before Yugi can introduce himself, “and I’m Shinx. We’re new in town. We’re planning on staying for a while by working at the guild, but we need somewhere to stay for the night first, since  _ apparently  _ the guild isn’t open this late at night.” He looks up at Grandpa. “I’ve heard that you’re the person to get lodgings from.”

“Oho, so I am!” the shopkeeper says. “Because you got in so late, I’ll tell you what— you can stay in the tent right behind here, free of charge. If you want to stay longer than a few days, though, you’re going to have to start paying for it! As cute as you two are, I am running a business!” He laughs like he was telling a particularly funny joke, and something in his smile makes Yugi smile back, too.

“We’d love that, thank you.”

“It’s no problem!” Grandpa says. “Why, I remember when I was your age. Exploring the world! Discovering new treasures! I used to be a pretty well-known treasure hunter, you know. So naturally I have to get two kids like yourselves started off!”

“I’m not a kid,” mutters Atem.

“Come back with me, come on, come on,” says Grandpa, and he takes them around back. The tent he offers is small, and around it, there are boxes of stored merchandise. Atem takes a look at the goods and scowls, so Yugi can only assume that it’s not particularly valuable. The tent itself is green and painted with a turtle shell as well. On the inside, there’s surprisingly soft looking straw and pillows. Yugi never would have thought it, but the straw looks lovely to sleep on. “You can come stay with me any time Seto and his brother get too much for you, you hear?” Grandpa chuckles. “Now, get to bed, both of you.”

“Yes, Grandpa,” Yugi says.

“Alright,” says Atem. He shuffles his feet for a moment. “…and, uh, yeah. Thanks.”

As the lights dim around Waypoint Town, Yugi curls up to sleep in a straw bed in a tent behind a Kecleon’s shop with a Shinx he just met. If he could remember it, he thinks he would have dreamed of home. Since he can’t, he instead dreams of here.

* * *

Atem wakes up first in the morning, and when Yugi wakes up, his bones have never been heavier. “Come on,” Atem says. Outside, Yugi realizes, he can hear chattering and the sounds of Pokemon moving around. “Come on, the sun’s risen! Why are you still sleeping?”

“I like night better,” says Yugi, and he tries to turn back over on his pillow. He can wake up in five minutes, thanks. He has no desire to be awake until well after the sun is high in the sky. He feels heavy and sore, almost like he’d been… oh, he’s not sure. Unconscious in a sandstorm? That probably would do it, wouldn’t it?

“We’re going to join the guild today, and don’t you want to show Seto your best face? He’s the guildmaster, you know, and I’ve heard he’s very strict. So you need to wake up!” Atem stomps a foot for emphasis.

“Ugh,” Yugi says, very coherently. He is suddenly afraid this will become a frequent morning routine for him, and he doesn’t much like the idea of it.

“Atem’s right, boys,” says a friendly voice from outside.

“UGH,” Yugi says, more emphatically. 

“You’ll want to get to the guild early, so you can talk to the Guildmaster right after he’s done getting his people rounded up. That way, you might even have time to take a mission today.” There’s a pause. “I got you two breakfast.”

Yugi’s stomach rumbles, because holy shit, how long has it been since he’s eaten? And when Grandpa pulls out the mix of fruits and who knows what else, a mix that should, to a human, look kind of weirdly colorful and strange, all Yugi can think is:  _ finally. I have never wanted food so badly in my entire life. _

He stands up in a flash.

“Come on then, eat up and I’ll show you the way around town.”

“Thanks,” Atem says.

“What about your shop?” Yugi asks.

“Don’t worry too much about little old me,” Grandpa says, “they can wait for my doors to open up like the rest of you. Now, come on.” 

For several minutes, Yugi and Atem eat in silence. It’s not that they don’t want to talk, it’s that Grandpa’s cooking is apparently really, really good. That, and they don’t want to impose on the kind old man longer than they have to. Or, Yugi doesn’t. He doesn’t really have any idea about Atem. Atem honestly looks like he’s just trying to inhale his entire plate.

Once they’re done eating, Grandpa takes them outside. “If you’re going to be in the guild, this is one of the parts of town you’ll want to spend the most time in,” he says. Now that it’s morning, there are Pokemon everywhere. A lot of them are wearing badges. Colorful flags flutter around them, and colorful tents stand in rows around them. It’s almost overwhelming. Atem is watching everything with such wide eyes that Yugi thinks he’s trying to somehow glare at everything around them at once. Yugi wonders if he’s ever been in a town this big before. “This is the shopping district,” Grandpa says. “I own the general store, so I expect to be seeing a lot of you. After all, I have the best exploration supplies in town!”

“I see,” says Atem solemnly. 

“Now,” Grandpa says, “some shops travel around, but you’re gonna want to keep track, especially of the ones I point out as I walk you two to the guild tower.” He points at a shop where a cat is lounging on a stone desk. There are dice hanging from the shop’s windows. “That’s Persian’s bank. You’re going to want to leave cash with him before you go anywhere.” The cat gives them a flirtatious wave and a wink as they walk by. Yugi feels mostly bemused, especially when Atem makes a scandalized growl at the gesture, doing what Yugi imagines must be the Shinx equivalent to blushing. “He’s like that with everyone,” Grandpa advises, “so don’t go getting your heart broken, got it?”

“I would never,” says Atem, sounding horridly offended, and Yugi snorts.

“Over there,” continues Grandpa, “with that Wishcash? That’s the port.” It’s less of a port and more of a stream, Yugi thinks, that happens to come up into town. Inside the stream is a whale-like Pokemon with a bright expression. “He helps people who want to get places that it isn’t easy to reach by foot. That, and he does all the fishing for treasure you could need. Wishcash is pretty good to talk to if you ever need to get places, mostly because he’s been at sea so long.” They keep walking.

As they walk, they pass about three different Ralts. They’re all rapidly setting up their own shop. Yugi cannot tell them apart for the life of him. “The Ralts brothers,” Grandpa says. “The eldest, Espa, shared his name so it would be easier for us to tell them apart.” Yeah, Yugi’s not sure how that would help… “They help with the mail. Pelipper don’t like flying this far out into the desert, so they teleport and carry it. That, and they can psychically send messages.”

“Psychically?” Yugi exclaims, “really? They’re really psychic?”

“…yeah,” says Atem, “of course they are. What’s so weird about that?”

“Nothing I guess,” says Yugi, and tries not to feel a bit off-balance. He’s a lightning-firing sheep, this shouldn’t feel so strange, this claim of psychic ability. And yet… here he is, finding it exactly as strange as possible. 

“That over there?” Grandpa continues, pointing at a strange stone building that looks more like a boulder with a hole in it than an actual  _ building.  _ “That’s the dojo. Ryhorn runs it.” They’re getting closer to the tower in the center of town. “He mostly only comes out to hang out with a particular pack of dog Pokemon, but he’ll help you train. Says he doesn’t want to explore too much himself, though, according to his friend, that’s because neither of them can stand the Guildmaster.” There’s a small grin on Grandpa’s face. “But they’re good folk.”

At the foot of the tower, there’s a small blue tent. “And… heya, Anzu,” Grandpa says. An Azumaril pokes her head out.

“Huh? Oh, hey Grandpa,” the girl says. “Who are these two?” She turns to them, smiling. “It’s nice to meet you, both of you.”

“They’re new in town. They’re going to talk to you later.” Grandpa turns back to Yugi and Atem. Yugi’s looking at Anzu, wondering why his heart is twisting in such strange loops. “This is Anzu. She’s in charge of living quarters for everyone in town.”

“So we get a real place to stay?” Atem asks.

“Only if you want to get away from Kaiba,” Anzu says. “He’s not as bad as everyone says, really, but I don’t blame you if you do.”

“Right,” says Yugi. “That’s, um, really reassuring.”

“Indeed,” says Atem, in a tone of voice that makes Yugi think that maybe, possibly, Atem had missed the sarcasm in his statement. 

“Good luck with the Guildmaster,” Anzu says, and then they all turn to the tower.

“This, of course,” Grandpa says, “is the Guild. You’re going to have to go in there without me for a guide, though— I don’t visit the inside of the Guild often enough to know what goes on in there! That being said, if you meet a team with a Burmy and a Tyrunt, tell them that they currently still owe me a tab, and that I can’t let them buy more escape orbs until they finish paying it off.” There’s a dangerous gleam in Grandpa’s eyes.

“Thievery doesn’t pay, after all,” he adds. It's absolutely terrifying. Yugi has no idea how an old chameleon can sound that terrifying. Yugi will never, ever steal something. Ever.

“Right. I’ll, uh, keep that in mind.”

“Well?” says Atem. “We should go in.”

“We should,” says Yugi, and then, they do.

* * *

The Guild hall’s entrance is immediately overwhelming in an entirely new way to Yugi. There are a few Pokemon milling about, but mostly, its the stature of the thing. It’s not really grand, but it’s noticeable. It feels like a building that says:  _ look at me. Look at what’s been carved from the earth.  _ Yugi stops, just to take in the air, but Atem keeps on walking. On realizing that the Shinx is getting ahead of him, he scrambles to catch up. (He needs to stay with Atem. He can’t end up lost and on his own…)

In the center of the guild hall, there’s a desk. Sitting on the desk, there’s a Claydol. The Claydol turns to face them. “Welcome,” he says neutrally. “I do not recognize you. Are you here to file a mission, or a rescue request?”

“No,” says Atem. “We want to be explorers.”

“Ah,” says the Claydol. “Interesting.” He stares at Atem for a moment. Yugi shifts uncomfortably. The Claydol is looking right past him, and right at Atem. In that moment, Yugi wonders if he even exists to the Claydol. The ground-type nods at last. “I suppose you would want to be an explorer. Very well. You can go to meet the Guildmaster.” He gestures to a contraption in the back of the tower. “From there, you can reach the rest of the guild. The Guildmaster is on the top floor.”

“You’re staring at me,” Atem asks, “why?”

“Oh,” the Claydol says, “no reason. You simply… remind me of something. Go on.”

“Yeah,” Yugi says. “Um, I’m sure he has his reasons! Come on, Atem.” He walks towards the contraption in the back. It’s surrounded by panels that make Yugi’s wool stand on end, but they don't make it stand on end as badly as that Claydol. That Claydol… he’d had a voice that Yugi knew better than to try to trust, for some reason. He felt bad. He didn’t like judging people. There was just… something there. Something there that Yugi couldn’t quite shake off. (He'd felt a lot of that recently.)

“What do I remind you of?” Atem presses. 

“Atem,” Yugi says.

The Claydol tilts its many-eyed face. “…you will be a wonderful adventurer,” the Claydol says instead of answering, and then says, “go on. Follow your companion. We can talk later.”

“Fine,” says Atem. He goes to stand on the contraption with Yugi, and then, carefully, Yugi taps one of the wires, the one that’s labeled "up". Below them, the disk Yugi that they’re standing on alights. Yugi yelps as it moves upwards, the stone walls around them whipping past, but Atem is relatively unruffled.

“The Guildmaster managed to copy this from ancient ruins,” Atem says rather loudly. “I’d thought it was just a rumor, that the Guildmaster could even begin to try to build something as grand as this!” Yugi just tries to stay on his feet. If green is a feeling, he's feeling it. They rocket upwards for a while longer before, at last, the disk stops, and they look at the entrance to a room that must be near the very top of the tower.

“Shaddi said you would be coming,” says a voice from inside. “Well? Get on with it.”

Yugi feels himself shaking again as he steps into the room. It’s large, for one, but it’s dwarfed by its occupant. A massive blue dragon looks down on them, his red wings coiled around his body. The dragon’s red claws tap against the ground where he lies. He's lying down, and yet Yugi is fairly certain that the Pokemon could wipe both him and Atem out in a  _ second _ with very little thought to the matter. He wouldn't even have to stand up. This… this Salamence… it must be Seto. It must be the Guildmaster himself. No wonder he was in charge; even lying down, he commanded attention. Flying over a mystery dungeon or an exploration party, Yugi felt, he must strike fear into criminals and awe into clients.

Yugi and Atem both had to look up to even meet his eyes. For a moment, Yugi even looked away, but then he looked back at Atem. There, his new… partner? His partner was gazing up at Seto almost defiantly. Yugi wasn’t going to undermine that, so he looked the dragon in the eyes again too.

Seto huffs. “Good. The two of you aren’t cowards.” A single claw taps against the ground again. “You. You both want to join the Guild, do you?” Tap. Tap. Tap. “We don’t take weaklings here. I built this town up from nothing. You’ll have to listen to everything I tell you to do, and do it easily. Quickly, even.” Tap. Tap. Tap. His tail swishes lowly across the ground, like a cat’s. “The Guild is a large organization, but without me, Waypoint town would be another hard edge in the desert. Guild members who join through  _ my _ branch of the Guild must be tough.”

Yugi doesn’t look away. He feels like, if he looks away, Seto will eat him alive. 

“I’m from the desert,” Atem challenges. “I came here on my own. I’ll be better than anything you expect.”

“Hmph. Don’t be so arrogant.”

“It’s not arrogance,” Atem continues to challenge, “it’s not. It’s fact. Are you going to dispute that?”

“Atem,” Yugi says.

“You should shut up now,” Seto says, as he stands. “It’s arrogance.” 

“Don’t Bagon dream of flying and fall off cliffs?” Atem says. “You’re the last person who should be talking about arrogance.”

“But look which of us grows  _ wings _ , Shinx.”

The two of them stare each other in the eyes and Yugi, who knows he cannot be showing the dragon any fear, decides that fear is probably cleverer regardless, and steps back. Unlike Atem, he’s perfectly aware that he is  _ very small  _ in comparison to the Guildmaster. And while he and Atem can both apparently shoot lightning from their bodies, at this moment, he wouldn’t be picking a fight with a dragon. Just… thinking…

Yugi sees sparks on the ground, and bouncing off of the strange triangle necklace that Atem wears. “Atem,” Yugi says again, “you should— think about this.”

“Listen to the  _ tiny sheep _ .”

“…” Yugi almost changes his mind there. Tiny sheep? He’s not that small! He’s— well, no, he is pretty small, but not that small! He doesn’t even know why he’s defensive, but he feels the electricity in his own tail and wool lighting up a bit in response. He’s not someone you can just, just push around, you know! He’s here for a reason!

“Oh, you’re cute,” Seto says, and Atem growls. It comes out half-squeaky from his throat. (Shinx aren’t fully grown, are they? Yugi isn’t sure how he knows that for certain, but he does. Shinx aren’t fully grown, and Atem can’t quite growl, not all the way.) “You want in on the guild? Fine. Here are some explorers badges.” He turns in a dramatic motion, causing the wind to sweep across the room. “See how long you last,” he says, pulling badges out of a trunk in the back. “Desert rat.”

“Cliff-jumper with delusions of glory.”

“And look who’s in charge of all of  _ this _ .” Seto smirks. “You aren’t in your part of the desert, Shinx, so I’d suggest you play your part. Now, you’re both new guild members. I would recommend you go find my brother; he’s got a few…  _ good missions _ for new recruits like you.” He lies back down, dismissive. “Do you have a team name?”

“Uh,” Atem says, and turns to Yugi. “…do we have a team name?”

Yugi… has not thought of a team name. They must need one, though. He looks down at the badge he’s just been given, watching the light gleam through its golden eye. He looks back up at Atem’s necklace.

“…Millenium. Team Millenium,” he says. 

“Fine. Team Millenium. I’ll put you down in the books. Now, get out.”

Yugi and Atem step out of the Guildmaster’s room, and back onto the elevator, though not before Atem growls one more time at Seto. They step back onto the moving platform, and Yugi pressed a wire that is labeled with “Mission Boards”. He turns to Atem.

“What was that?” he asks.

“He was being a prick,” Atem says.

“He’s in charge of us now,” Yugi says, “and you were the one extolling his virtues earlier!” Yugi pauses. “…we never even introduced ourselves. I thought he was known for wanting his name on top of everything?”

“He is,” mutters Atem, “and a lot of his employees only use their nicknames instead of not doing that because they admire him. But I bet he wants the name just to show off.”

“I can’t believe you got into an argument already, though! You should be more, um, polite?”

“Why should I?” asks Atem, almost dangerously, as the elevator drops down again, and before Yugi can think of a response they reach their destination.  On stepping out, they see Pokemon milling about. Yugi is struck by the floor-to-ceiling cork boards. All up and down them, there are requests written on sheets of paper. There are pictures of lost Pokemon, and there are pictures of outlaws. Some of the higher ones have massive reward numbers, too. On the side with mostly lost or confused or trapped Pokemon, or Pokemon that want to be escorted, the rewards start to get esoteric; some even come from Pokemon who simply want to join a rescue team very, very badly. Some of the missions aren’t easy, though, especially the ones worth something. Yugi doesn’t know much of anything, but escorting another Pokemon through a volcano cannot be an easy task for any of the people involved. On the side with outlaws, the list of crimes is what gets more intimidating. Reading up the list, it often starts with petty thieves. But as they go up… A Marowak with a price on his head that’s barely out-done by several Pokemon of a totally unknown species, known for vanishing on the spot and his terrifying green flames that sing of burning villages.

There are Pokemon gathered around the boards. “Oh,” Yugi says. “That’s the Tyrunt and Burmy that Grandpa mentioned. Come on, Atem, we can get our mission in a minute.” He heads forward, and Atem follows, though he keeps on looking back at the mission board. (Yugi’s glad that they’re seeking someone out to assign them one. The sheer number of missions there is very, very intimidating. He doesn’t want to think about having to pick one for himself now, while he doesn’t know much of anything at all!)

“Um, hello?” Yugi says upon getting to the pair. They’re looking over a supply mission.

“Hey, Tyrunt, check it out. Noobs.”

“What,” Yugi says quietly.

“You’re right,” says the the Tyrunt, “they are new. What do you want with Team Dinobug, huh?”

“I have a message from Grandpa,” Yugi starts.

“That old loser’s still on about that? Tell him we’ll get back to him…  _ never _ . Hah, he doesn’t deserve any of our money if he let us get away with that stuff!” The Burmy laughs.

“What,” repeats Yugi.

“You got a hearin’ problem or something?” The Tyrunt looks over them. Atem is behind Yugi, already sparking again. (Yugi’s noticed that Atem’s got far more of a temper than Yugi does. It’s a little concerning sometimes, but Yugi doesn’t think he truly minds.)

“He doesn’t have a hearing problem,” snaps Atem. “Pay him back. He’s a kind old man who’s done nothing to you!”

“I told you, we’ll get  _ on it _ . What’s fresh meat like you gonna do about it, huh? Those badges look pretty shiny. You’re going to fail your first missions and have to turn them right back in!”

“Hah, yeah,” laughs the Tyrunt. “…come on, Burmy, lets get our mission.”

“Is that what you’re doing? We were simply here to deliver a message, and yet you continue to insult us. I think I see what Grandpa means when he gets that look in his eyes about thieves," Atem says snappishly.

“Thieves? Bleh,” says the Burmy. “I’m just taking advantage of generosity.”

Yugi doesn’t feel like getting into another argument, so he simply nudges Atem with his forehead. “Come on,” he says. “We need to head and get our mission. These guys aren’t worth it.”

“They insulted you,” Atem says. “…Seto did too.”

Huh.

“Still not worth it,” Yugi says, before smiling back at Team Dinobug.

He wants his first mission. He feels like he’s met a lifetime’s worth of people today; he just needs to meet one more and a client, and then he’ll finally get to find out what all of this “rescue team” business is all about. Burmy may continue to make taunting noises (while Tyrunt makes slightly less mean-sounding taunting noises from the background in an echo) but Yugi… he’s met so many people in such a short time, and most of them were pretty kind, weren’t they? So, in comparison, Yugi figures they don’t matter much in the grand scheme of things. 

“Fine,” Atem says. “Alright.”

“Thanks,” Yugi says, smiling, and then they go to reach a desk in the center of the two billboards. The flying types that zip about the boards gathering missions all answer to the Pokemon sitting at the desk. It takes Yugi a moment to realize, though, that what he’s looking at is, in fact, a dragon-type. After he does… well, it’s the only dragon-type in the room, but it’s not really what Yugi expected to be someone so imposing's brother, you know? He’d expected something a bit… bigger? Less doofy-looking? Because there, in the center of the room, was a Goomy.

“Oh, hey, you two are the new recruits! Get over here,” the Goomy says. “I’m Mokuba! I’m in charge of the police force, and also the missions desk when big bro doesn’t wanna do it.” The Goomy beams.

“We’re Team Millenium,” Atem says.

“Yeah, I know,” Mokuba says. “So you’re gonna get a new mission from me, right? Don’t worry too much, everyone’s first mission is a bit, um, off-the-cuff…” 

“…don’t worry too much? Why would we have to worry?”

“Oh, it’s a swamp mission,” Mokuba says, grabbing a letter with his mouth before putting it on the table in front of them. “A supply run, to collect berries and apples. It shouldn’t be that hard, but new recruits, they  _ always _ complain about missions. Especially the first one. So I thought I’d make it clear: this is your first mission! Don’t worry about it too much! Feel free to take it as lightly as you want! After all, you only go on your first mission once.”

…Yugi feels like the gleam in Mokuba’s eyes should concern him.

“Go on, accept it, Team Millenium,” Mokuba says.

“Naturally,” says Atem. Yugi wonders if he's taking the gleam in Mokuba's eyes as a challenge or just ignoring it.

“Excellent. You start tomorrow. Since you’re both guild members, you can sleep in the tower if you want, got it?” He smiles. “And I’d get plenty of rest and food today. Your first mission starts tomorrow. Go stock up and be ready; your first mission should  _ always _ be one to remember.”

“Right,” says Yugi.

“We will,” says Atem.

“Now get out of here, I won’t let you take more than one mission until you prove you can handle at least one of them.”

“Yeah, okay.” He almost looks like he wants to be indignant again, but instead settles down with a small huff.

“Let’s go,” Yugi says.

The two of them leave the Guild, and they go to buy supplies from town, and then, when they’re done, they come back to sleep. It is the second day in a row that Yugi has hit a bed made of hay and soft cotton and fallen asleep instantly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yugi, watching atem and seto: "why are you like this."
> 
> anyway, waypoint town is meant to be treasure town, but with more colorful textiles everywhere than treasure town had! so if you need an aesthetic, that's it. that's the aesthetic. the elevator is the rainbow stoneship, except it only ever goes up and down, which is a lot more boring than the actual rainbow stoneship.
> 
> mai is an oricorio because my brain went "hnn pretty bird" when i was trying to think of what pokemon everyone should be. she uses flowers to change formes at will and kicks ass.
> 
> grandpa is a kecleon because all shop owners are kecleons in mystery dungeon. also, all kecleons in mystery dungeons will IMMEDIATELY swarm you and murder you with surprise god-like stats should you accidentally steal something. "STOP, THIEF!" is a terrifying set of words IM SORRY KECLEON I JUST COULDNT FIGURE OUT HOW TO GIVE IT BACK TO YOU AFTER I ACCIDENTALLY PICKED IT UP NOW PLEASE STOP MURDERING ME. in other words, grandpa is a secret badass. this fits him. fight me.
> 
> i am technically posting this chapter like, four minutes early, but im sleepy and need to stay ahead for a few days anyway.


	3. The First Mission

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Team Millenium attempts their first mission, but complications arise even _before_ they leave town...

At the crack of dawn, Yugi and Atem approach the docks, preparing to leave for their first mission.

Yugi isn’t much of a morning person, but he puts up with it, because it’s important. It’s his new job, and the two of them will need to make an absolutely great impression if they both want to _ keep _said job. It’s just a supply run, but it still crosses through a mystery dungeon, and after the trip Yugi had taken with Atem through that first mystery dungeon… Well. 

Atem had been surprised to learn that the Guild had, in fact, given them money for supplies— the banker had flagged them over, and Yugi had talked to him while Atem had hidden from the horror that was someone making a genuine attempt to flirt with him. From there, they’d gone to Grandpa. Yugi had decided not to talk about the encounter with Team Dinobug, but Atem had _ plenty _ to say. Grandpa assured them that, no, Team Dinobug was always just like that, and it wasn’t their fault that the encounter hadn’t ended with either of them agreeing to actually pay off their tab. Grandpa had also assured them he had ways to deal with it if they didn’t pay off soon. The expression on Grandpa’s face had been… something. Yugi had stopped Atem from asking further.

Seriously, for an old lizard, Grandpa had a certain spark to him that made him pretty frightening. He was really nice, though. He’d even told Yugi and Atem that Anzu had officially cleared the space in the back of his shop as a place they could stay, if they ever got tired of the tower. Yugi was seriously thinking about it. While Atem was perfectly comfortable in the tower, it was colder than staying with Grandpa. Sure, they weren’t surrounded by supplies, but the walls were twisted stone, and Yugi preferred living with other people. Maybe if the tower got a little unbearable, with all the noise (and the fact that Kaiba’s mere presence seemed to annoy Atem), he really _ would _ take Grandpa up on that offer. He wasn’t sure why they’d both taken such an instant liking to each other, but they had. It made Yugi very happy indeed to know that he and Grandpa got along so well. Grandpa, when he wasn’t scary, made him feel safe.

When they’d supplied up for the mission, Atem had walked Yugi through what they could buy with their money. He’d _ started _ with something called a Reviver Seed— apparently it was smartest to always go on missions with one, because being knocked out carried steep penalties within the mystery dungeons themselves. He’d bought an Escape Orb (similarly useful in case they ended up in over their heads), and then he’d bought several Oran Berries, to heal them as they went. They’d still had cash left over, though.

Yugi lifts a hoof quietly to the bandana now around his neck. Atem had said that he hadn’t needed anything, not with his necklace, the one that Yugi still hadn’t quite worked up the nerve to ask too much about. However, Atem had explained, Yugi should wear some kind of symbol, too. Some scarves could apparently help make Pokemon stronger, and Yugi should apparently take advantage of that. Yugi didn’t argue. It had taken Atem and Grandpa a while to find something they liked, but finally, they came out with a black bandana with the same golden symbol Atem wore painted on its hem. Yugi fell in love with it instantly.

It apparently boosted strength for someone with an “aura of light”, whatever that meant. Yugi didn’t care so much about that. It just felt right, having some heavy symbol of Atem hanging around his neck, that was all. 

This morning, they had woken up at the crack of dawn. They weren’t the only ones in the Guild that had. They’d gone down to the mess hall, where a Chimecho had made them all food. It was more of the strange mix of things that Yugi was pretty sure humans wouldn’t find appetizing, but given that both Atem, a cat-like carnivore, and Yugi, a sheep-like herbivore, could somehow eat it, Yugi figured there must be some specialization in the “making food for Pokemon” field that he didn’t already know about. Otherwise, how was a cat and a sheep able to eat the same food, and like it?

Now, they check the mission paper. “It says,” Atem says, “to talk to Mako. Who is Mako?”

“It must be Wishcash,” Yugi reasons. He isn’t sure why he is so certain of this, but it _ feels right, _ saying that Mako was some form of great whale. “Come on.” They walk out through town. Unlike the Guild, the town isn’t exactly alight with people. It is early, still dark. Shops were opening up. When they walked past Grandpa’s, Yugi is sure to wave. (Yes, living with Grandpa… that felt like something that would feel almost indescribably _ right _, if only Yugi could place why.)

It’s as they approached Mako’s pier that they saw someone they didn’t expect. Their client is a Spinda, they’d been told, though they hadn’t personally met their client. They weren’t even supposed to be _ meeting _another Pokemon at the docks. So why is a Ryhorn standing there, with a small Houndour on his back?

“Hey,” the Ryhorn says.

“Yeah?” Atem asks.

“You the adventurers heading out this morning to the Foggy Swamp? Mako told me someone was going.”

“We are,” Atem says.

“Listen,” Ryhorn says. “My best friend, her older brother— a Houndour, Jou. He left for the swamp to go pick something up. He’s basically a novice adventurer in his own right, but he hasn’t found a rescue team for him and that Seto prick— well, they got in a fight a while back, can’t stand each other. That’s not the point. Jou left to the swamp because he wanted a rare berry that helps with vision.”

“It’s my fault,” whispers the little Houndour.

“No, it isn’t,” says Ryhorn. “…look, me and Jou, the head of the Guild? Seto? Yeah, we’re basically two persona no grata around him. He’d charge me out the ass just because he could. But I’d heard a new team was heading out, and… I… I’m worried. Jou could be fine, but fire-types, they don’t do too hot in the swamp, you know?” Ryhorn shuffles. “He’s proud, so tell him you came from his best friend Honda. Tell him his best friend Honda thought he was being a moron and that he should come back already.”

“I see…” says Atem. Then he nods solemnly. “We will. We’ll find him and tell you to come back for you. You won’t have to worry.”

“Thanks,” Ryhorn says. “I own the dojo. I’ll make sure you get all the training you ever need, just… bring back Shizuka’s brother for me, alright?”

“Yeah, thank you,” says Shizuka, and Yugi wants to ask: is this a good idea on our first mission? But Shizuka looks so grateful… and Atem. Atem looks lit up and determined in a way that Yugi hasn’t seen him before. It’s almost inspiring, the way he practically glows as he accepts this mission. Plus, it’s pretty cute. For someone who’s been growling and sparking at anyone and everything since they’d gotten into town, complaining about small indignities, and laying claim on scarves for Yugi, watching him be so genuinely delighted to pick up some stranger’s request…

Yugi thought about warning them that they were true novices, not just the types of novices taking a trip to a novice dungeon. That they’d never done this before. But… he doesn’t want to take any hope away from those two.

“We’ll contact you again after we visit the Foggy Swamp, okay?” says Yugi, instead of any warning. “Come on, Atem, we should go ahead and tell Mako where we’re going.”

They step towards the docks.

Yugi really hopes this goes okay.

* * *

“You aren’t the first people to ask for a ride to the Foggy Swamp today,” Mako says idly as he carries them to the swamp. He’s fast. Like, way faster than Yugi thinks a whale is supposed to be? Maybe Whiscash are just the speedy sort. “Anyway, it’s just an hour’s walk from right about… here.” He stops suddenly. “Good luck with finding Jou. Oh, and your guild mission too, I guess.” He laughs. “You’re electric-types, right? Shouldn’t be that hard for you to traverse the swamp!”

“Thanks,” Yugi says, mostly because it’s polite. Atem doesn’t say much of anything, and then they set out onto the road. As they crossed the water, it had gotten much more humid. In comparison to the desert, it made Yugi’s wool feel sticky and strange. As he walked, he didn’t generate as much static electricity, he realized. Without generating static electricity, were his attacks going to be as strong? Was he supposed to actually care? He still didn’t like the idea of fighting things, but even he somewhat saw the necessity in these mystery dungeons. And if there truly was a Pokemon missing, well, he and Atem couldn’t just leave them there, could they?

For a while, they walk on the road silently. There are signposts for other towns, though there’s no sign of them. Apparently, clans of Pokemon live in the swamp, but judging by the lack of any visible signs of anything other than semi-feral Pokemon… the towns couldn’t possibly be quite the size of Waypoint Town. From how people spoke, there must be other branches of the Guild _ somewhere _, too, but they must be pretty spread-out, mustn’t they? After all, if the Waypoint Town guild is taking a mission here…

The road is somewhat clear, but around them, there is swamp water and vines. It honestly makes for enough of a _ natural _ maze that Yugi found it hard to imagine an even more frightening unnatural maze somewhere in there. There are even signs warning travelers where to go to avoid accidentally entering the mystery dungeon. To think that the two of them were going to have to go in it...

“It’s up ahead,” says Atem. “Are you ready? You have all our items ready, right?” Yugi’s holding the item pouch. Atem has the Reviver Seed on his own person, though. They’d decided to split it up like that while riding with Mako. Atem is more experienced, and so is more likely to be able to revive Yugi, but Yugi is honestly better-designed to carry the item pouch Atem had than Atem himself.

“Yeah,” Yugi says, “I’m ready.” He feels his legs trembling, but there’s no time for fear. “Lets visit this Foggy Swamp place.”

They enter the mystery dungeon together. What Yugi most immediately notices is this: swamp water isn’t exactly great on _ hooves _ . If the desert had been difficult, well, the desert at least wasn’t the _ swamp _. Yugi makes a small baleful baa. “Nevermind,” he says, “I’m not ready.”

“Yugi,” scolds Atem, “lets just keep walking. This is a pretty well-explored dungeon, so nothing is likely to crop up that’s that hard to— oh, no,” he says, and Yugi watches as Atem starts having to try to tug his own claws out of the clawing mud. “No, this is fine. I am a desert Shinx. I have faced much worse, in a place filled with nothing but damn ground types.” He growls at the water.

“Wait, don’t,” Yugi says, as Atem’s fur starts to spark again. Sparks dance across the surface of the muck, though thankfully all the mud mixed in with the water stops them from spreading too far.

“Well this is brilliant,” Atem says, growling at the air, before breathing in slowly. “But if as an electric-type I’m having problems… imagine poor Jou.”

Yugi tries to imagine a Houndour in a place like this.

“Yeah,” Yugi says, and stops complaining. They start marching through the swamp water. It gets tiring fast, and, after a moment, when they come across their first Pokemon to fight—

Yugi gets ready to shock it with electricity. A… Thundershock? Yes, that’s what it’s called—

“Oh nooo,” says Atem, before darting forward and biting it instead. “Yugi, stay back. It’s a _ Wooper _.”

The blue, axolotl-like Pokemon smiles dopily right up until Atem finishes making short work of it. Most of what it does is shoot bubbles at them. The bubbles do sting just a _ bit _, but frankly, they don’t sting as much as his pride does given that for every Thundershock Yugi fired, the Wooper seemed entirely unaffected. Atem and Yugi themselves got more hurt, in fact, when the sparks bounced through the water. It takes Yugi too long to figure out why.

“It’s a ground-type,” Yugi groans.

“That’s going to be the whole dungeon, isn’t it?” Atem says. Around a corner, another Pokemon approaches. It’s, at least, not a Wooper, but it _ is _a Treecko, rather than the water-type they were hoping for.

“Probably,” agrees Yugi, as they prepare for another fight.

“…those dragon brothers are going to pay,” Atem growls. 

“It’s just a little hazing,” Yugi says weakly, and they continue to march through the muck together. “He talked like every new team goes through this. Besides, I’m sure…”

Another Wooper appears and fires mud at them, rather than bubbles. Atem knocks Yugi out of the way of it, but what of it hits does _ worse _ than stings. A ground-type attack, and while Atem had knocked Yugi out of the way of most of the damage, he’d _ also _knocked Yugi straight into the mud. Leaves and water covered Yugi’s face for a moment and by the time he stood up again, he was soaked.

“…this was targeted,” Yugi manages to sputter a moment later, while Atem bites down hard on the Wooper as well, knocking it out. “A targeted attack.” He’s never going to get all the swamp gunk out of his wool at this rate. He barely knows how having wool works, let alone how to get swamp gunk out of it.

“He gave us this mission to screw with us. Come on, I think I see the next corridor right ahead.” They march through the swamp to get to the next door.

After about forty-five minutes, the general annoyance hasn’t quite faded, but the swamp doesn’t feel as awful to generally _ exist _ in, either. The maze-like roots are giving way to understandable patterns at last. The Wooper are still irritating, but alongside the Wooper and Treecko and the _ especially _hard to take out Grimer, they’d been thrown a bone, and discovered that Basculin also lived in the swamp. Finally, Pokemon that could actually be taken out with a quick dose of electricity to their faces. But there was something… off about this swamp. Yugi shudders as a strange breeze blew past. It felt like something that could lift him and Atem right off their feet if they weren’t careful.

“Where’s the damn stairs?” Atem asks.

Yugi still doesn’t understand how stairs appear in a swamp, but mystery dungeons bend space. Mystery dungeons bend space and are always, _ always _ multi-level. He’d been given this crash course by Atem earlier, and he remembered his confusion about that back at the Oasis. Mystery dungeons just had some kind of ladder or stairs in them at all times, whether they lead upwards or downwards, and whether you exited them from a higher level than you entered them from or not. 

And yet, they had yet to find the stairs here. He’s sure they’d been through this room twice.

“I don’t know,” Yugi says. “Should we start marking our path?”

“The swamp will…” the breeze blows again. “…eat it away, but that breeze will _ carry us away first _ at this rate!” There are barely even any Pokemon coming for them at this point, and Yugi has no idea where they’re coming from, given that he’d think they’d seen all of them by now. 

Yugi looks between the roots of the trees. “It can’t be that bad,” Yugi says. “Maybe it’s hidden among the roots? Along the walls?”

“That’s not how this works,” Atem says, but the two of them start scaling along the walls anyway. Who knows? Maybe it was among the twisted roots. It didn’t make sense for there to be no exit at all. They went back through the same winding roots, the same mazes of trees, the same rooms full of Wooper and Treecko and Grimer and Basculin. The breeze blows again, and Yugi’s glad they’re along the wall, because he could manage to _ hold onto _the wall. Atem rolls across the ground, leaving a trail in the mud and leaves.

“What is that breeze?” Yugi asks, panicking.

“I don’t know,” says a frustrated and newly soaked Atem, rubbing the back of his head. “I think I hit something hard… wait. Get over here.”

Yugi runs over. Where Atem had hit a rock, there was mostly leaves on the surface, but… they both brushed all the leaves off the top.

Where stairs down were hidden.

“What?” says Yugi. 

“That’s… weird,” says Atem, which is even more concerning. Yugi doesn’t know much about the world, but Atem does. And if his guide doesn’t know what’s going on, then Yugi has even less of an idea what’s going on. “The leaves covered it so completely and deliberately. I’ve never seen that before…”

The breeze starts to pick up again.

“Lets go,” Yugi says. “I’m sure, if it's just a coincidence, it won’t happen going forward.” They march up to the next level of the hell swamp.

It’s not just a coincidence, though, not when they take another forty-five minutes to find the _ next _ stairs, and only find them because Yugi tripped over them. Yugi frowns as they descend to the next level… and it happens a third time. By now, they’re both exhausted. The swamp is sapping away all of Yugi’s electricity, and this dungeon’s supposed to be a lot longer, if not this hard to get to each staircase from. Atem’s mouth looks sore and muddy, too— while Yugi can use Tackle, Atem has both Tackle and Bite, which means that he’s been doing a _ lot _of biting things today.

“Someone,” declares Atem at last, loftily, “is sabotaging us.”

“It…” Yugi tries to come up with a better answer. He sighs. “Yeah, someone is sabotaging us.” He passes Atem an Oran berry from the bag. “But Jou is still somewhere in this dungeon. We need to fight on.”

“You’re right of course.” He nods, and he follows with Yugi deeper onto the stairs. From then on, they are careful to watch the floors of each room, and once they do that, the hidden stairs are no longer hard to find. That didn’t mean the trek isn’t still very exhausting. By the sixth staircase, both Yugi and Atem are tired and covered in water, mud, leaves, and sweat. They’d searched each floor. They hadn’t found the Brightberries their client wanted, and they hadn’t found any signs of a Houndour either.

“Maybe he got out on his own after all,” Yugi murmurs. (The Brightberries… Yugi’s sure they’re important, but they aren’t as important as the other lost person that’s apparently in this forest. Really, they should be panicking more, but getting through the dungeon was enough of a slog that they really _ couldn’t _ move much faster to find out what had happened for poor Honda and Shizuka.) 

“I’m not sure about that,” Atem says— and then a voice calls out from above.

“Nyeheheh. And you won’t be!” says a voice and… it’s Burmy. Yugi notes that, unlike before, when he’d been covered in sand and stones, Burmy was covered in leaves and was grinning at them menacingly. “We saw your mission. But, you see, new guys, we don’t want you getting all _ uppity _ because that stupid Kecleon likes you. We’re the best unevolved team on the block, and it’s time for us to show it!”

“Yeah,” says Tyrunt. “Team Dinobug is gonna take you _ down_.” 

“We don’t have time for this,” Atem snaps.

“You don’t have time for this? Oh, don’t worry. As soon as we’re done with you, we’ll deliver your Brightberries, and you’ll be kicked out of the guild for your incompetence for sure!” Burmy laughs. “After all, if you get bested by such a _ basic dungeon_, what use are you to a Guildmaster of _ Seto’s _ caliber?”

“We really don’t have TIME FOR THIS,” roars Atem, his voice squeaking as he does. He’s too angry to notice. “We aren’t just looking for the stupid berries anymore!”

“Hah, looking for glory too then?” says Tyrunt, looking a lot _ angrier _ than Burmy did. “We’ve been working for months and we don’t have a lick of it. What do you two think you’re going to get, huh?” He stomps his foot.

“No, there’s a missing Houndour,” says Atem. “We can fight after we find him.”

“Yeah,” says Yugi quietly. “I don’t care about glory, but…”

“But nothing,” says Burmy. “We figured out where you were going, we laid in wait for you, we set the perfect trap! Don’t try to deny it and worm your way out of it now, huh, cowards?” 

“We need to go,” Yugi insists.

“No,” says Burmy. “You don’t— because we have the Brightberries right here!” Burmy hold them up and _ laughs _ . “Say goodbye to your mission goal, _ Mareep. _” He picks up the Brightberries and tosses them deep into the swamp. “I’ve changed my mind. We won’t deliver your mission for you. We’ll just leave you here in total failure! Nyeheheheheh!”

“Hah,” says Tyrunt. “Good luck going forward like that.”

“…let’s take them, Yugi,” says Atem, sparking menacingly.

“Okay,” responds Yugi. He’s worried. He hasn’t actually fought a single Pokemon that could talk properly yet. The only Pokemon he’d fought so far were those that mystery dungeons had in their thrall, or created, or whatever it was they did that made the Pokemon not quite right. He hasn’t… actually tried to fight any Pokemon that could think. That could get _ upset _ . But… they _ have to _ get to Jou. Honda is depending on them to find that Houndour. Plus, this guy had just pitched what was technically their real mission objective into the Foggy Swamp’s trees, where they could never reach it. So much for making a good impression to their bosses. This mission was totally toast.

“Hah, you wish,” says Tyrunt, who steps forward and _ Roars, _ blowing both Atem and Yugi back. Yugi gasps at the strength, hitting the wall with a thud. Atem growls, his fur lighting up with sparks, and he starts to charge forward. Yugi feels his own wool sparking weakly. Unlike Tyrunt and Burmy, Yugi and Atem had needed to fight through almost every inch of every floor of the dungeon to get here. They were exhausted.

Burmy flings himself in Yugi’s direction. Yugi yelps as the Tackle connects, before Tackling back himself. To the side, he can see Atem giving up on Sparks and going back to just Biting, but he can’t focus on that, not when Burmy keeps on tackling Yugi. They _ bruise _. The tackles leave indents on Yugi’s wool as he dodges around and tries to aim a very weak bit of lightning. a Thunder Wave, instead of a Thunderbolt? It hits Burmy and he cringes. Lighting flickers up and down the coat of swamp leafs that Burmy had created. 

_ Paralysis_, Yugi thinks, before tackling Burmy again. Before he can do much more, however, a claw comes down on him, and Yugi yelps as he turns around to see that Tyrunt had turned to fight Yugi instead. Yugi cowers a little. He has no idea how to fight either of these people. He feels thoroughly out of electricity. Burmy throws up a shield, which throws off Yugi’s rhythm, and then Tyrunt descends. Yugi’s pretty sure he’s starting to bleed.

“Aren’t we both in the Guild together?” Yugi asks. “Aren’t we supposed to be on the same team? What are you doing?” He feels teary-eyed (with anger or distress or maybe both) as he watches Atem tackle into the side of Tyrunt again, _ hard_. Yugi desperately shakes his wool. Some sinks around Burmy— Cotton Spore?— slowing him down on top of the paralysis. “Please stop fighting! We can work together, there’s a Pokemon who’s potentially in trouble here! Please, we have to try to work together for this, don’t we?”

“Don’t be stupid,” says Burmy, “we’re— ow…”

The paralysis. Yugi shoots another Thunder Wave at Tyrunt, and it hits true, before shaking his fur. Cotton Spores come out of it. “Then, um, I’m really sorry about that. _ Come on Atem. _”

“They hurt you,” snarls Atem, “they hurt _ us _ . They sabotaged a whole _ mission _ for their own stupid pride.”

“I don’t care,” Yugi snaps. “Jou is more important right now. They can’t catch up while they’re both paralyzed and slowed down, so we need to go right now!”

“No you don’t,” says Tyrunt, and he _ Roars _ again. Yugi and Atem are both blown back to another wall. For a moment, Yugi’s vision goes totally white as he hits it. He feels his hooves buckle. He’s not knocked out, but he’s close. He’s really close. He’s nearly knocked out, at the very least, which isn’t something Yugi’s a terribly big fan of _ being. _ Worse, he’s not knocked out all the way. He fumbles for an Oran berry from his bag. Beside him, he can hear Atem struggling to stand, too. The blow back to hit the wall had been enough to hurt them both pretty badly, hadn’t it. All by something as stupid as Team Dinobug, huh?

Suddenly, a strange chill covers the swamp. Yugi looks up and he sees… something ethereal in white, curling with frost nipping at their tails.

“…Oh, Yugi,” says the nine-tailed fox that has appeared from seemingly nowhere. The Ninetales quietly turns to Team Dinobug, who is looking up at them with fear. “I should thank you two,” the Ninetales said. “You made finding the Brightberries a lot easier for me and my partner.” The fox leaps down from the trees, treading across the swamp water effortlessly as it freezes beneath them and lifting both Yugi and Atem up before they can sink. Team Dinobug continues to stare, stunned. “Since we have what we need… you two had a mission. You should get out of the dungeon, shouldn’t you?”

Behind the fox, Yugi sees a burst of strange green flames. 

“Why should we listen to you?” says Atem, through struggling lips.

“Eat your remaining Oran berries,” suggests Ninetales. “And be more careful, alright? You bought an Escape Orb, didn’t you? If you knew you were being sabotaged, you could have used that.”

“You better not be babying some fucking kid adventurers,” says the voice from the flames. Yugi can just barely make out the shape of a skull. “We just needed the fucking berries. Come on, you moronic fox. lets get out of here before any of them get enough of their bearings to, I don’t know, do their fucking jobs?” The green flames barely part for a moment and Ninetales sighs. 

“Of course.” The fox turns to Team Dinobug and blows on them slightly. The water around their feet freeze. Ninetales turns back to Yugi and Atem. “You two should get going. Um, my partner can get really annoyed sometimes around adventurers. And, well, he’d have particular reason to be mad at you two, so you two should really leave before he can properly see you.”

“You are,” says the voice from the flames. “You baby.”

“Shinx, Mareep, go,” says Ninetales, before the ethereal being in white leaps past them and into the green flames, looking back at them for only a moment. “After all, we’re criminals of a much higher explorer ranking than you should have to deal with,” adds Ninetales.

“What?” roars Atem.

“Come on,” says the voice from the flames, “get out of here before they get their bearings.”

“How do you know Team TK?” snarls Tyrunt.

Yugi suddenly feels like he has no idea what’s going on at all. Not that he ever has. “I don’t know them, but come on Atem, we have to save Jou!”

“WAIT,” says the voice from the flames. “DID HE JUST FUCKING SAY—”

“And that’s our cue to leave come ON Marowak,” says Ninetales.

“YOU DON’T GET TO JUST CARRY ME AWAY FROM THIS,” shouts the voice, “LET ME AT HIM!”

“Come on Atem,” says Yugi, before turning apologetically to Team Dinobug. “If it makes you feel better, I have no idea what just happened either? Um, I’m pretty sure this wasn’t supposed to happen but you did attack us so I don’t feel that bad? If I know them I don’t remember because I’m missing most of my memories _ Atem we can’t take them right now come on. _”

“How does he know _ me? _” says Atem, with a snarl. “He must have recognized my name, or…” he looks down at the necklace he’s wearing for a moment. “But I’ve never met a Marowak in my life. Yugi, we need to apprehend them! If they’re really Team TK…”

“We need to go,” says Yugi. “Jou. Jou _ needs us _.”

“What the hell,” says Burmy quietly from where he’s frozen. “What in Giratina’s name…”

“I SAID LET ME BACK AT HIM!” shouts a voice in the distance.

“…fine,” says Atem. “Lets get out of here.”

“Don’t just leave us!” yelps Burmy.

...Yugi really doesn't feel _that_ bad when they leave them to go find Jou.

* * *

It isn’t until they’re two more floors into the strangely quiet dungeon that Yugi realizes: “He knew my name.”

“What?” says Atem.

“Ninetales,” Yugi said. “He spoke to me at first by name.”

Yugi and Atem exchange glances. Yugi swallows.

“What’s locked away in my memories, Atem?” he asks.

“I don’t know,” Atem says. “But you’re the one who said we had to worry about Jou. Come on.”

* * *

It doesn’t take Yugi and Atem too long to get to the end of the dungeon. For a moment, Yugi panics. But then, he sees it— a dog, curled up, hiding beneath a bush and sleeping. He’s covered in cuts and bruises. Yugi wonders how long he’s been pinned to this location.

“Jou…?” ass Yugi, stepping up tentatively. “I was told to say Honda sent me.”

“Honda… sent explorers?” The dog peeks out from underneath the bush he’s hiding beneath. “That’s kinda unlike him…” It’s a Houndour, alright. “I’m Jou. I was here lookin’ for Brightberries, but there was this crazy guard! I couldn’t get past him, but… oh hey, you’re both electric-types. Sweet. You’ll have this in the bag!”

“…a guard?” says Atem, sounding just as exhausted as Yugi feels.

“Yeah,” says Jounouchi. “I can’t get to the exit with this Brightberry without fighting him.”

“You have a Brightberry?” asks Atem.

“Sure do,” agrees Jounouchi.

“Oh,” says Yugi. “We were supposed to collect those…”

“There won’t be any,” responds Jounouchi. “A weird bug and a dinosaur came by while I was hiding from the Seaking that guards the exit to this dungeon.” Jounouchi briefly shudders.

“You could pay us for rescuing you,” Atem suggests, but his heart isn’t really in it. “No, no, please don’t,” says Atem after a moment. “That’s for your sister, right?”

“Yeah,” says Jou. “She was born with an eye problem… without this, she isn’t gonna be able to see long very properly. They’re pretty popular, since they make it possible to see all kindsa crazy stuff, but… my sister needed one badly, and most rescue teams won’t give me the time of day…”

“Alright,” says Atem. “We weren’t going to make you pay, anyway.” He turns to Yugi. “Come on. Let’s finish up this stupid trip out.”

“Agreed,” says Yugi. He’s frustrated and tired and ready to go home. “I’ve got a little bit more electricity in me.”

“Funny, so do I,” says Atem.

Jou follows them as they march right up to the exit. The Seaking would be annoying and intimidating under normal circumstances. But, with Yugi as exhausted as he feels at this point— he’s crawled through swamplands for hours, he was attacked by a fellow Guildmate, and apparently a criminal knows his name— he’s pretty sure that he could care less how much more evolved or better at attacking a Seaking is. He wraps up all that annoyance in his fur and feels sparks _ fly _.

Apparently sheer, concentrated exhaustion is enough to spark back to life the electricity the swamp had been sapping, because the Thunderbolt that Atem throws was just as horrible and piercing as the Thunderbolt _ Yugi _ throws. The Seaking goes down in about six hits, never getting a proper hit in on either Yugi or Atem. Maybe it was tired from knowing Jou was in its space this whole time, or maybe it’s just that, after the day they’d had, the boss of the dungeon really wasn’t any match for them. Behind them, Jou wags his short tail excitedly as he watches. “Oh wow,” says Jou. “Honda picked some great explorers. Man, you two are incredible…” 

“It’s nothing,” says Yugi, even though this was a lot of effort to go through. “Now, come on. Let's get out of here. Let's go back to Waypoint Town.”

* * *

Trudging back into Waypoint Town is exhausting, but seeing the look on Honda and Shizuka’s faces when Jou comes home with a Brightberry is everything the two of them could have asked for. They wave off payment for the time being and return to the Guild, exhausted, tracking in mud, and ready to sleep and pretend the day hadn’t happened. Or at least, Yugi’s ready to pretend that much. He never wants to have another mission like this again.

The memory of Honda laughing and thanking them… the look in Shizuka’s eyes when she realized those same eyes would see… those were the things Yugi kept in mind, the good parts to remember. Nothing else is. Yugi wants a bath. He knows there’s a bathhouse in town, but that there’s also a Guild bathhouse he can use… 

What he doesn’t expect on stepping into the bathhouse is for Team Dinobug to have somehow gotten back before them. Mokuba is standing in front of the doors, Team Dinobug smirking from behind him. “Team Millenium?” he says. “You have some things to talk about with the Guildmaster.”

The ride up to the Guildmaster’s office is quiet.

“I’ve heard,” the dragon says, “that you failed a mission today. Not only that, but you attacked a fellow Guild member, and that, apparently, some of the _ most notorious phantom thieves on the continent _ thought, for some reason, that they ought to say _ hi _ to you.” He gazes down on Atem especially here, contemptful.

“…I’m the one whose name they knew.”

“Oh, they knew Atem’s name too, I’d have been more surprised if they hadn’t,” says Seto conversationally. “Though, that is quite fascinating, Mareep.” He taps a claw on the ground. “Care to tell me why?”

“I don’t know,” Yugi responds, feeling very small. “I don’t have any memories.”

“Wonderful. I love fairy-tales,” says Seto in a tone that says the exact opposite. “So, I send you two on a first mission. It’s intentionally a little unfortunate for you two, certainly, but. Not only do you _ fail _a straightforward mission, you do it spectacularly.”

“Did Team Dinobug tell you they attacked us first, huh?” asks Atem, who would look more intimidating, Yugi thinks, if he didn’t also look about ready to fall over. “They definitely attacked us first, after all. We were only defending ourselves.”

“That’s not the story they told me,” Seto says. 

“And you believe them?”

“You failed your mission,” Seto says instead. “Your fairly simple, introductory mission. A group of criminals knows both of you. Atem, fine, understandable, but you, Yugi? With only fairy tales to explain yourself? I’d need a very good reason for you to stay on.” His face twists into a smile, almost mean. “After all, I can’t have more people getting hurt on missions…”

“WAIT!” says a voice from the elevator. Yugi and Atem spin around, and it’s Jou, panting and out of breath. “Wait,” he says again. “I— I got lost, so my friend told them to come after me, got it?”

“Oh, the mutt speaks too,” says Seto. “Really? You got _ lost? _ I thought _ wonderful explorers _ who _ come from nothing _ don’t need help.”

“Yeah, well, shut up, power freak,” says Jou. “Listen, the Guild takes new recruits as payment, right? So I’m offerin’. One time deal. Put me on Team Millenium here, and then they’ll have gotten payment. I’ll even admit I took the berry they were supposed to bring back for my sister. I’ll take the punishment.”

“Really? You’ve come here to _ join me _, mutt? Fascinating. If these two can bend the laws of nature, maybe I’ll keep them on after all.”

“Don’t be an ass,” says Jou.

“Careful,” says Seto. “You work for me now.”

“Shut the hell up,” mutters Jou, in a way that might be intended to be under his breath. Seto ignores him and turns to Atem.

“Well? Take your new teammate. I’ll… consider what to do. Consider yourselves still members of the Guild for now, though Mokuba will be assigning you missions a while longer. Now, get out. I still haven’t had a _ real _conversation with Team Dinobug.” A growl underpins Seto’s words. It’s a noise of anger on an entirely different tier than the anger that he’d displayed when he had just been yelling at the two of them about the botched mission.

Perhaps Seto did actually believe them when they said Dinobug attacked first.

Jou turns to them. “I’m not sleepin’ in this buildin’,” he says. “Come on. Anzu said you two was cleared to sleep with Grandpa, so if you stay there and I stay with Honda, we’ll be closer together than if you two stay here.”

“Yeah, if Atem wants to.”

“Sure,” Atem says. “Lets go.”

* * *

That night, Yugi dreams of wishes, stars, and the white-tailed fox that knows his name.

* * *

  
(some art of team millenium by [silentsongs!](https://silent-songs.tumblr.com/) link to their tumblr post of it upcoming when i get that post)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> because it's never stated: burmy is haga, and tyrunt is ryuzaki. haga couldn't shout "say goodbye to exodia", so he improvised.
> 
> yes, this means yugi and atem got beat up by _haga and ryuzaki_ of all people. i'm sure this bodes well for their future in this fic!


	4. The Hunters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rumors float through Waypoint Town as Yugi and Atem get settled.

Jou, as it turns out, is a pretty competent new member of Team Millenium. This is a pretty good thing, because, for all that they got to stay on at the Guild, they still aren’t given leave to pick their own missions. Because they don’t have leave to pick their own missions, Mokuba’s been assigning them. And because the Goomy has been assigning them, and definitely remembers how thoroughly that first mission had gone south, and also clearly remembers that Jou isn’t the biggest fan of his beloved older brother…  _ Well… _

Their first new mission was a success, but it had been through a cave in a mountain. It had been another simple retrieval mission; the mountain had a room full of evolution stones at the back of it, and the Poliwhirl who’d hired them had desperately wanted to be a Poliwrath for some time. The problem was, as a cave, it had mostly been full of more rock-types– Pokemon that none of them could handle easily. At least, unlike the swamp, Yugi had actually been able to walk on his hooves through the cave. Keeping his balance was occasionally a challenge.

After that, they’d visited Honda’s dungeon. There, however, someone else had been waiting for them as well. It went something like this:

“You guys,” Anzu says, “get in way too much trouble.” The Azumarill swings her tail. “You need to check with me before you go living somewhere else, anyway, so I can make sure it’s free, you guys.” She looks over them with a critical, somewhat worried eye. “Look, guys, I’m basically in charge of team personnel for most rescue teams too, so if you want me to keep track of who’s supposed to be in a team together, you need to talk to me.”

“Sorry, Anzu,” Jou says.

“You better be, you idiot,” says Anzu. “Now, you’re all in Team Millenium, right? I’ll keep track of that. Should I put Honda’s name down too, or Shizuka’s?”

“Nah,” says Honda. “I’ve got a dojo to run. Don’t have time to be running around, getting lost in mystery dungeons all day.”

“We do more than getting lost!”

“You get lost all the time, Jou, this was just the first time you hadn’t come back afterwards. Excuse me for not wanting to  _ also _ show up covered in dirt and with no money.”

“You take that back!”

“Boys, boys,” Anzu interjects, “you’re both pretty.” She then turns to Yugi and Atem. “I didn’t get to say it before, but thank you for making sure Shizuka got the medicine she needed. She deserves better, especially when she has to put up with morons like these guys all the time.” 

“What am I,” asks Jou, “chopped liver?”

The Azumarill gives a small bow, ignoring Jou entirely. “So if you need anything from me, feel free to say what it is, okay?”

“Oh, thanks,” says Yugi, “but we don’t need much.”

“Yes,” agrees Atem. “Exploration and helping people… both of those are their own rewards.”

“In that case…” Anzu rounds back on Jou. “You let yourself take advantage of these people, huh? You got them to help you for basically nothing!”

“Hey,” says Jou. “I had to join Seto’s stupid Guild! I’d say that I gave them something pretty damn big, myself!”

“Like I said, nothing!” Anzu says.

“Are they… always like this?” Atem asks Honda, a little nervously.

“Yeah, pretty much,” Honda says.

“They seem like good friends,” Yugi says, and Atem looks at Yugi like he’s crazy. Yugi, however, while watching Anzu and Honda and Jou fight… they look like good friends, and Jou’s presence is like… an invitation. An invitation for Yugi and Atem to get to join them and be friends too. It makes Yugi happy. He doesn’t remember if he had friends like this before, but he thinks, if he did, that would have been a great thing. He could almost imagine, sitting and arguing with friends like this before.

Anzu finally gives up on berating Jou and hugs him. Jou looks almost sheepish. Honda snorts, and shows Atem and Yugi where the entrance to the dojo dungeons are. (“You have to leave all of your items with me, but you won’t lose stuff that you got in the dungeons if you’re kicked out, and the dungeons are arranged by the type of Pokemon that frequent them, so it’s good for practicing stuff.”) Yugi looks back at Anzu and Jou, and then decides: before they head back to Grandpa’s to sleep, they’re going to come here, from now on, or at least, Yugi will. He’ll come here to be surrounded by Pokemon who treat each other like an extended family. It’s a lot nicer, Yugi thinks, than the Guild, where everyone’s so busy all the time.

So as badly as the missions were going, at least Yugi and Atem have the Dojo gang.

And, besides, there was Team Dinobug. They hadn’t, ultimately, been kicked from the Guild entirely, but if Mokuba was being petty towards Team Millenium, he was being outright  _ cruel _ towards Team Dinobug. Apparently, the only reason they weren’t kicked out entirely for having dared to attack fellow Guildmates was that there wasn’t any definitive proof they’d done it, and that the dragon brothers had decided that they couldn’t  _ definitively  _ pick one side of the story over the other side of the story. It was clear from their behavior, however, that Seto believed Team Millenium over the Burmy and Tyrunt, and Team Dinobug had been getting the shortest possible end of the stick ever since.

While they didn’t seem that likely to try to sabotage them again, Team Dinobug resultingly  _ hated  _ Team Millenium. It should have just been a petty rivalry, but it didn’t feel like it, not with how Team Dinobug would glare and go on. Yugi still didn’t really understand what he’d done to provoke an attack in the  _ first place _ , but he wouldn’t be surprised if they tried to pull something now. The only reason he suspected that they  _ hadn’t _ was the close eye all of the other teams were keeping on them. Not only was Mokuba giving them hard missions, but it would seem that the other rescue teams around Waypoint Town had been warned what had happened.

Despite Atem’s own judgement, Yugi felt bad. Atem had thought that the shunning Team Dinobug was facing was justified. Yugi, however, didn’t understand. Why had Seto trusted their word over Team Dinobug? Sure, Burmy and Tyrunt were both a little… hard to deal with, sometimes… but they had been members of the Guild longer than either Atem or Yugi had. Seto was supposedly a great judge of character, true, but… was it really fair, to make that judgement entirely in favor of new team members, as opposed to the old members that they were supposed to have known for longer?

But the shunning was happening— and Team Dinobug’s anger over it was palpable. Yugi and Atem tried to avoid them when they could. Living outside of the Guild itself, then, with Grandpa, had been a great option. They still went into the Guild for missions, but Grandpa was at least a place where they wouldn’t have to deal with Dinobug’s anger.

Their second mission after the disaster was exploratory. There was apparently a new mystery dungeon that had formed out at sea, and since Yugi and Atem were both electric-types, it was deemed wise for them to be the team to go to the Seabound Caverns. That, and it was probably to screw with Jou, who had come too, despite whining the whole way about how awful all the water-types were going to be for him. The water-types had been pretty hard for Jou to deal with, but he’d dealt with them with aplomb— or as much aplomb as a Houndour could manage, anyway. Meanwhile, Yugi and Atem had discovered that while the  _ Pokemon  _ weren’t much of a threat, the water could be. Which is to say: all three of them came out  _ slightly _ singed. Yugi felt especially bad, because Atem at least had  _ more _ of a handle on how not to send his electricity careening wildly at other Pokemon thanks to the water everywhere in the caverns. Yugi… knew a lot less about how that worked. He had been responsible for a good two-thirds of the friendly fire on that mission as a result. Still, their exploratory mission had discovered that, if nothing else, the Seabound Caverns eventually opened into a beautiful plaza, where mysterious treasure chests floated up from beneath the waves. Stalactites hung down from the ceiling there, and when you hummed, it felt like all of the walls hummed with you. Yugi thought it was gorgeous, if not quite worth the lesson in friendly fire and the conductive properties of salt water.

When they’d come back from that mission, treasure chests and new information about the Seabound Caverns in tow, they’d had to go to Claydol to get the treasure chests open. Apparently mysterious locked chests such as these frequently required that a psychic-type be the one to open them, and Claydol was, for all he was creepy, the best option. Claydol had fixed his disconcerting gave directly on Atem almost the entire time they were standing there to use his chest-opening services.

“These should serve you well enough,” Claydol said, before turning to look at Yugi. “And you… you continue to walk alongside him?” 

Jou had snatched the treasures— something valuable called a Pure Seed, a Pecha Scarf, and several orbs capable of changing the weather inside of dungeons— and made a low growl. “Stop bein’ creepy at them,” he’d said, and then turned to Atem and Yugi. For some reason, Claydol seemed surprised that Jou would even speak up. Then again, Claydol had been treating Jou like he didn’t exist. The fact that Jou was suddenly and loudly existing must have confused the psychic-type.

“I assure you,” Claydol said, “that was not my intent. It was simply to… assess. The two of them are something else, after all. Especially…” He looks down at Atem’s necklace again. 

“Yeeeeeah,” Jou said, “still makes me want to kidnap a Klefki rather than talk to you again, and Klefki can be a pain in the neck. Yugi, Atem, come on, let’s go.” 

Jou did not, in fact, kidnap a Klefki anytime soon, but then again, no one expected him to. However, if Atem was already wound up, or Yugi was already upset, Jou would often be the one to go get any chests they’d found in dungeons opened for them. It was easier for all of them that way.

A third mission, and a fourth mission. Both were fairly simple escort missions, but the Pokemon they’d had to escort, both times, was… something else. One had wanted an escort through a forest that had become almost entirely tangled in mystery dungeons, so that he could make it to some festival a group of forest Pokemon were having. This would have been fine if the Ledyba seemed convinced that, despite the fact that he was  _ paying  _ for an escort, he didn’t actually need to follow any of their instructions. The Ledyba had almost been knocked out or killed by simple hazards, such as nuts falling out of trees, almost as many times as their entire party had been attacked by feral Pokemon. The Ledyba had successfully made it to the festival, though, and paid them decently in the process.

The other had at least been more polite, but the poor Silcoon had to be  _ carried _ for most of the way, because Silcoon are not the best at actual locomotion. Carrying another Pokemon through a dungeon was tedious, but at least Silcoon didn’t get attacked by trees continuously for the entire mission. And when Silcoon got to the center of the forest, she’d shocked them all by greeting several Wurmple and evolving right there. Apparently, seeing that family of hers again was enough to help her evolve then and there.

They had come home after each of their missions, hung out with Jou, Anzu, and Honda, as well as Shizuka from time to time, and then, Yugi and Atem had Grandpa’s back room to go stay in. They were still surrounded by supplies, but Grandpa made a good breakfast. They had to pay him a bit of rent, but they just took it out of their rewards and Guild paycheck. Yugi had the sneaking suspicion that Grandpa was giving them a discount anyway, especially since, one day, after the escort missions, Grandpa said: 

“I’ll tell you what boys. I’ll take the rest of this stuff out of your rent if you help me around the shop sometimes. This old back of mine is getting pretty hard to handle. I can’t do all the heavy lifting I used to do, you know?” 

“I’d love to,” Yugi said.

“We have to do explorer work most of the time though, Grandpa,” Atem warned.

“Oh, don’t worry too much about that,” Grandpa said, laughing. “We’ll just make time here when you  _ do _ have free time.”

And then, Yugi and Atem didn’t really have any free time left after that at all. 

Still, even without any free time, even with each mission having its new annoyances and new changes, they were getting used to life in Waypoint Town. Yugi still didn’t know how he’d gotten there, but at the end of the day, he thought he might be happy with where he’d ended up.

* * *

Working in Grandpa’s shop is interesting. It lets Yugi and Atem hear rumors far sooner than they’d have heard them if they had simply stayed in the Guild. It’s not, of course, that the Guild doesn’t have plenty of rumors— the Guild is full of rumor-mongers— it’s simply that people  _ talk more _ around Grandpa’s shop. Therefore, it’s because Yugi is working at the shop while Atem trains with Honda that Yugi ends up hearing a specific rumor. Or, well, the start of a specific rumor:

“I hear the Hunters are near town,” one Pokemon says.

“There’s been an uptick in criminal activity,” the other says. “It could definitely be the work of the Hunters. We need to be careful out there, then…”

In another moment, he hears a Lunatone talking in hushed tones to a Magneton: 

“Duality’s been as skewed as it’s ever been,” quietly, hushed. “The world’s a bit out of balance.”

“Do you think it has something to do with the Hunters?”

“I’ve heard they’ve been stealing artifacts from legendaries,” the Lunatone says, “but…” They glance up at Yugi. “Oh, excuse me,” the Lunatone says. “Do you have any ribbons for sale here?” 

“Yeah, of course,” Yugi says.

Duality. He’d heard Atem say something about it, but he didn’t know what it meant. It wasn’t any of the knowledge in-born into him. And the Hunters… Yugi could only assume they were a group of outlaws. He had to wonder if Team TK was involved with them somehow. Was that why they’d been there, the other day when Yugi and Atem had been on their first mission? It didn’t explain how Ninetales knew Yugi. Yugi wanted to think that Ninetales had simply been eavesdropping, but somehow, that didn’t feel quite right. No, Ninetales hadn’t simply been eavesdropping, and Yugi didn’t have a choice but to ignore how strange his heart and gut felt about the whole matter. 

Now, people were talking about Hunters and Duality. That night, he asked Atem and Grandpa about it.

“I can tell you about the Hunters,” Grandpa said, “but I was never faithful enough to really know too much about the Duality. It’s just said that there’s a being of Darkness and Light. If one or the other gets too out of balance, the whole world goes out of whack. According to rumors, some of the legendary artifacts that affect the Duality are stolen or missing, and that’s why there are so many mystery dungeons cropping up these days, but…”

“The balance of the world,” Atem says. “That’s what the Duality stands for. The Duality is said to be a two-faced thing, of both Necrophades and Horicite, of both shadow and light, of both darkness and morning, of Luna and Sol, refracted through the same crystals.” He fiddles with his necklace. “Supposedly, there are powerful treasures in this world that connects directly to the Duality, but the legendary Pokemon are said to guard them, and even those that aren’t guarded… well, Duality is regulated by a legendary too.” Atem pauses. “But… it isn’t false, that it’s starting to fall out of balance. And it isn’t false, that this could cause the formation of mystery dungeons. No one knows why it’s falling out of balance. It just… it just is.”

“Huh,” Yugi says, wishing he had anything more intelligent to add, but knowing that he didn’t. “That sounds… really big. And the Hunters?”

“I know more than Atem likely will,” says Grandpa, who had been looking at Atem oddly for a moment as Atem had explained Duality. Huh. “The Hunters are a gang of Pokemon criminals. Some of what they do is basically just exploring for personal gain— they’re known to totally clear out dungeons that they walk through. Some of it, though…” Grandpa shakes his head. “They steal from other Pokemon, and hurt them too. They only seek out the most legendary of artifacts. Their leader is a mysterious shadowy Pokemon, said to be followed by an even more mysterious shadow of his own. The only leader most people have met is an Aggron, but the Aggron answers to someone else in the organization.” Grandpa sighs. “They were feared on further reaches of the continent, but if there are rumors about them here… it seems that the leader of the Hunters must have gotten his shadowy claws into other people around here…” 

Grandpa looks over the both of them. “Now, I know you’ve both had some interesting encounters with Seto and Mokuba, but if nothing else, they’re extremely protective of this town. Expect to be worked harder than normal.”

Yugi nods. The next morning, he and Atem suddenly find themselves assigned with multiple missions per dungeon. They’re told to do as many Guild missions as they can manage. The outlaw board is starting to be covered with strange faces, with even stranger lists of crimes.

* * *

And at night, Yugi dreams of stars and a whisper about a wish, a whisper about a partner. He tosses in bed. A whisper about a wish, a desperate plea in the back of his head—

* * *

“Listen up you two,” Mokuba says. “You’ve gotten way more trustworthy than I thought you would.”

“What about me, huh?” Jou asks.

“Nah,” Mokuba says. “You’re just as untrustworthy as ever~!”

“Hey!”

“Anyway,” Mokuba says, “Team Millenium. We’ve had an outbreak of thievery and general mayhem. The Hunters are around town. We’re going to need you to start picking up pettier criminals for us while the bigger explorers take down the big guys. We’ve got explorers like Mai or Team Paradox on it, so don’t worry about, or even  _ try _ , to go for the big ones, got it?” Mokuba gives them a look like he’s afraid they’ll go running off to bite off the heads of criminals— or get their own heads bitten off in the process. He didn’t need to worry so much in Yugi’s opinion. Running off after these guys was a terrible idea... 

...except then Yugi looks over at Atem and Jou. Jou is just doing his standard dealing-with-a-dragon-brother bristle, but Atem… Atem looks like he’s bristling as well. Does he really expect to be able to successfully take out a group of trained criminals? Sure, the three of them had been doing a lot of exploring, and had grown a lot more capable of using their abilities than they had before, but… 

“We’ve got it,” Yugi says, before Atem or Jou can say anything. “So, petty criminals?”

“Yeah,” says Mokuba. “You apprehend them, and my crew picks them up once you’ve gotten them knocked around silly, got it?” He grins. “You’ll like this one, anyway— it’s a Skarmory who’s been goring Pokemon with that beak and stealing their valuables.”

“A Skarmory?” says Jou. “Finally, a Pokemon all  _ three _ of us can do somethin’ against.”

“He was last seen hiding in the Pencil Plains.” Mokuba gives them all a sharp look. “So go on, all three of you. Go take down that Skarmory.” 

The Pencil Plains weren’t a bad place to adventure for the three of them. It was mostly full of flying and normal types— two types of Pokemon that barely gave any of them problems. The flying-types, Atem and Yugi took down easily. The grass-types, Jou dealt with. They didn’t run into any problems from the dungeon itself, that mission. The outlaw, though… it was their first time trying to take down an actual  _ outlaw _ , and once again, something in the pit of Yugi’s stomach felt like rocks. He still didn’t like having to fight Pokemon who could talk. He still thought a less violent solution should be found whenever possible. He knew it was his job, but…

“Stop,” Yugi says quietly, as they reach the same floor of the dungeon that the Skarmory is on. “We’re from the Guild. Come with us now, please, so we don’t have to fight you.”

“Hah!” says the Skarmory. “As if I’d go down that easily!” And then, suddenly, he darts forwards towards them. His razor-sharp feathers tear across Atem’s fur and take aim at Yugi’s own wool. Luckily, the Mareep is fluffy enough to prevent most of the damage. Atem, however… Atem growls and fires a Thunderbolt at the Skarmory, who yelps. Yugi takes a step back.

“Okay, okay, I’ll direct from back here,” he says. He doesn’t want to get into this fight, but Atem says that Yugi is their best strategist, so Yugi’s going to do strategy from here. “Atem, you’re plenty fast. I need you to try to dodge around those Steel Wings when you can. Aim for a Thunder Wave before anything else, because we might be able to take down Skarmory with paralysis alone.”

“Oh no you don’t!” says Skarmory, before he flaps his wings into a Whirlwind. It sends Atem flying backwards towards the walls. Yugi… wonders exactly how many enemies have attacks focussed on blowing them around…

“Jou! Then take over!” Yugi says, and watches as Jounouchi opens his mouth before blowing a Flamethrower from his lips. The Skarmory dodges up and down around the jet of flame. “And Atem, if you’re okay…”

Atem stands up, and as Skarmory dodges around the Flamethower, hits it head on with a Thunderbolt. Skarmory starts trying for another Whirlwind, so Yugi picks up a rock and throws it at Skarmory.

“Ow, bastard,” says Skarmory, which is enough time for Jou to descend on the bird with a Fire Fang. The bird howls.

“There are three of us with an advantage and one of you,” pleads Yugi, even as he throws another rock. “Just come on back with us.”

“Never,” says Skarmory.

“Very well,” says Atem, and then he joins Jou in biting the bird, only this time it’s with a Thunder Fang. From where Yugi’s standing, he cannot _possibly_ imagine that biting down on a steel bird is the world’s best idea. It works anyway. The bird flails under their bites, but for all that Atem and Jou are much, much smaller than Skarmory, Skarmory is weak to both of their attacks. The bird flails a little longer before finally going limp. Yugi walks up to the bird and uses a Thunder Wave for good measure. Skarmory looks rather unamused.

“We flash our explorer’s badges to go back now, right?” Yugi checked with Atem.

“Yeah,” says Atem, “just like normal.”

“Hold on,” says Jou, who then ties rope around Skarmory’s legs. “There we go. You won’t be gettin’ away now.”

Then, Yugi flashes their explorer’s badge, and they’re whisked back. Honestly, the mission had fewer hangups than the average mission Team Millenium was sent on. Mokuba is waiting, two somewhat impressive looking Dragonair at his side as he waits. He snaps his fingers, and the Dragonair wrap around Skarmory and take him away. 

“Excellent work,” they’re told. “If I knew you people were better at hunting outlaws than hunting treasure, I wouldn’t have sent you on so many probationary missions.”

“I think I prefer the treasure,” Yugi admits, even though, for once, he isn’t covered in water, or singed, or tired from carrying a client all day. 

“Apprehendin’ outlaws is good, though!” Jou says, punching the air. “Our Team’s gotta keep on doin’ it!”

“You sure do,” says Mokuba, who hands them a  _ massive  _ stack of letters, “because we need you to cover all eleven of these.”

“…eleven?” Yugi says weakly.

“Eleven,” Atem mutters. “I assume some of them will be in the same direction, so we can get more than one of them done in a single day?”

“You’ve got that right!” says Mokuba cheerfully. “Get on it, Team Millenium— the sooner the outlaws are all apprehended, the easier it will be to focus on more concerning stuff. And, if you really prefer looking for ancient artifacts, the sooner you can do that. But don’t worry too much, I’ve got plenty where that came from!”

“Please no,” says Yugi.

“Aw yeah,” says Jou, “we’re gonna kick massive ass!”

Yugi makes a concerned baa, but no one listens to the sheep as Atem and Jou start passing back and forth ideas on how to best do the mass apprehensions.

* * *

The next few days are  _ awful _ .

Yugi manages to keep to an advisory, strategic role during the actual fights, which is nice. Yugi also still carries most of the items. They’ve added Geo Pebbles to their standard inventory, so that Yugi can throw them at enemy outlaws. On the first day alone, they go through two dungeons and apprehend four different criminals. “Criminals” might be a strong word; their bounties are low, and they are mostly petty shoplifters. Still, all but one of them decided it would be better to fight back than to just follow them back to the Guild to get arrested, and by the end of the day, Yugi’s wound up tighter than a kite. Jou still thinks they’re badasses, though, and Atem seems grimly determined.

As they turn in four criminals, Mokuba assigns them to hunt down two more.

The next day they only have time to fight two criminals. Jou is feeling less badass by the end of the day, and Yugi had needed to step in to fight some after they all discovered at once that an Arcanine they were checking, as it turned out, had  _ Flash Fire _ , an ability that meant that Jou’s enthusiastic fire-type attacks had only made the enemy stronger. Yugi comes home exhausted. They don’t really have time to have dinner with Jou’s friends again that night, either, not after Mokuba tells them to go on a late-night journey back to the oasis dungeon that Yugi and Atem had met outside of.

At night, the desert is cold and unforgiving, and the dungeon is much more unforgiving at night, too. It’s an emergency rescue, they’re told as they go. A Pokemon reported being overwhelmed in a dungeon that was once full of weak Pokemon, all because he’d gone out at  _ night _ .

The Duskull, who insisted on being called  _ Bonz _ for some reason, hadn’t been lying, for, at night, while the dungeon was still home to plenty of Lotad, powerful Umbreon also hid in the oasis, and Lanturn darted from each part of the oasis that had water in it. Their team only just managed to limp to where Bonz had become overwhelmed and called out for help, and found him surrounded by Umbreon.

They managed to beat the Umbreon, but only barely. And as they did, one spoke: “You won’t see the last of the Hunters in the night.”

They get Bonz home. They tell Mokuba what had happened. They were then shuffled up the Guild tower to talk to Seto, who tells them nothing, and sends them home.

Yugi doesn’t sleep well that night. He tosses and turns and dreams of stars and Ninetales. He doesn’t understand what’s happening. He doesn’t have time to try to figure out what was going on, though, and why his dreams were more and more restless. He doesn’t have time to figure out why Atem was increasingly concerned. No, he doesn’t have time, because that morning, they were back to trying to apprehend every damn criminal on the continent.

At the end of the third day, there’s no emergency rescue, but they sleep like rocks and have to wake up early the next morning anyway, because Mokuba wants them chasing a criminal who only tends to show up at dawn.

Around town, while Yugi’s in town, he sees a town that is restless. Around town, while Team Millenium is in town, Anzu is making sure every member of the town is really staying in the homes they’re supposed to. Around town, while Team Millenium is in town, Honda is often too busy for once to hang out with them. Everyone wants to train in the dojo. Whispers of the Hunters surround the panicked town, and Yugi and Atem and Jou are hardly in town enough to learn more than that.

After five days of the most hecticly paced exploring Yugi thinks they’ll ever have to do, Mokuba hands them a new mission.

“It’s going to be a two-day journey. Three different dungeons. At the end of it all, though, there’s said to be a grand treasure. Are you up for it?”

“Yes,” says Yugi.

“Ehhhh,” says Jou.

“You’re keeping us out of town,” accuses Atem.

All three of them pause.

Yugi thinks about it. Other than the one mission to the Oasis, they… really had mostly been out of town, clearing out requests to apprehend criminals no one else would care about. Mokuba _had_ been keeping them out of town. Why?

“I’m not,” says Mokuba, stubbornly, “and you’re gonna take this two-day mission. Or have you forgotten that you’re on thin ice with my bro, huh?”

“The Hunters— they’re after me, aren’t they?” snarls Atem. “Or if not that, someone’s requested to see me related to them. They’re said to be a group of criminals, but the leader is said to originate from the desert. They want me.”

“You’re gonna take the mission,” Mokuba says stubbornly. “My big bro says Team Millenium  _ has to  _ take this one.” Outside, the atmosphere in town is prepared for the Hunters that are apparently arriving soon. “After this, I’ll stop working you guys so hard, I promise, I can tell you’re barely awake on your feet, it’s just… I don’t have enough low-level teams right now so, since I can send you out of town, I am. That’s it, I promise. I even sent you on a Hunters related mission, remember? With the Umbreon?”

“You’re  _ keeping us out _ and I want to know why,” says Atem.

“We’ll take it,” repeats Yugi.

“What?” shouts Atem, turning around to face Yugi.

“I said we’ll take it, Mokuba,” says Yugi, “unless Jou objects too.”

“…to be honest,” Jou says, “I thought apprehendin’, what, like twenty pickpockets in five days? Thought it’d be more excitin’, but honestly I think I’m just about ready to pass out. A change of pace would be nice.” He shrugs guiltily. “Sorry, Atem.” 

“I can’t believe you two,” growls Atem.

“Please,” says Mokuba. “I’ll let you stay in town for a week, but we need someone on this and I’d send Dinobug but they’d get  _ stomped _ plus my brother says it  _ has to be you _ .”

“…fine,” says Atem. “Yugi, Jou, lets go.”

* * *

The first dungeon they have to get through is a strange, icy cave. Jou takes point for most of the dungeon, and in the cold, Atem will barely look at Yugi. So Yugi stays in the back. Maybe it would have been better to stay and investigate, but… Mokuba had looked desperate, and as angry as Atem had been for being kept out of whatever was going down with the Hunters, they were all new in town. Yugi and Atem didn’t have any right to insist on involvement, and Jou… Jou was clearly fine going on this mission too.

Still, as Jou melted away Glaceons and Snorunts and Delibirds, Yugi felt the cold shoulder worse than he felt the cold.

He was a bit of a burden on Atem, wasn’t he? Atem had let Yugi stay with him since Yugi had woken up in the desert, but… Atem had been coming to Waypoint Town anyway. Without Yugi around, Atem and Jou probably still would have befriended each other. After all, Atem had charged ahead into the forest. Without Yugi, maybe they wouldn’t have upset Team Dinobug, and that mission could have gone better. Without Yugi, at least, Atem wouldn’t have to worry about a mysterious team of criminals coming after them.

Team Millenium makes good time. They make it through the ice dungeon to immediately be confronted with another icy dungeon. However, it also starts to get craggy. Steel types and dark types gather among the ice. Atem looks behind them and says to Jou: “we might be being followed.”

“I don’t think so,” Yugi says. Atem glares at him. They keep walking.

Atem thought the Hunters might be after them. Jou continues to take point. Yugi’s the only one criminals know by name, though. Atem thinks the Hunters are after him because they’re both from the desert, but Yugi remembered how angry Marowak had sounded. Had the fact that Ninetales knew Yugi lead the Hunters right to Atem? Had Yugi, waking up there in the sand, caused this? He was once human, but he couldn’t remember any of his circumstances at all. Maybe he had helped the Hunters. Humans were said to be far-away myths here, but the Hunters hunted mythical objects, and Yugi had looked up Team TK’s position on the bounty board. They were some of the most wanted criminals on the continent.

Jou’s getting tired, so Atem and Yugi start stepping up. “I’m sorry,” Yugi says.

“It was my battle to fight,” Atem says.

“I shouldn’t be dragging you down,” Yugi says, and Atem whips around to look at him and growls lowly. Yugi flinches back, but before he can respond, Jou tumbles out of the exit to the dungeon. There, there’s a sport that’s perfect for making some kind of safe camp.

They make camp.

“That’s not why I’m mad,” Atem says.

“I know,” Yugi says, “but I don’t have any memories, and you’ve been stuck with me because of that. I’m sorry.”

“I’m mad,” Atem continues, “because the Hunters, they’re desert people. And my necklace… it was a gift from my father.” A small pause. “It’s very valuable though. Like, extremely valuable, apparently.” Another pause. “So, so I probably shouldn’t have left with it, but it feels wrong, not having it. But since it’s a rare artifact…”

“That’s why you think the Hunters are after you.”

For some reason, Atem looks guilty.

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, that’s all of it.”

“But I’m stopping you from standing up and fighting yourself. When we first met, you said you wanted to take all the danger in the world, and fight it all yourself.” Yugi hits his hooves against the ground to pin in the pins for their overnight tent. “But you can’t. You can’t take all the danger for yourself. One Pokemon can’t, and I don’t want to see you hurt. I don’t like seeing  _ anyone _ hurt, but you, especially, I can’t stand to see sad.”

“No one will hurt me,” Atem says confidently. “So when we go back, no one will hurt me, and no one will hurt you, and we’ll stand up for what’s ours.”

“Atem,” Yugi says, but he falls silent again.

He remembers nothing of the world.

There’s no reason for him to be so uneasy.

They join Jou, who has been pretending to be asleep to be polite, in the tent, and when Yugi sleeps, he dreams of screaming, and crying, and acceptance, and stars.

That morning, Atem is talking to him again. In the last dungeon, it’s mostly steel and electric types, but there are also fire types that Yugi and Atem have to take on. They’re mostly quiet, except for Jou.

“I actually ain’t ever been  _ away _ from my sister this long before,” Jou admits. “Normally I go and worry too much about her for that.”

“It will be fine,” Yugi says.

“…we were being followed,” Atem says.

“I don’t know,” Yugi says. “I think I would have noticed.”

They keep walking. This final dungeon is short, and at the end of it, they come across a statue. When they see it, Atem and Jou both frown. “I have no idea what that is,” Atem admits, but Yugi can’t help but keep on staring at it.

“…a human,” Yugi says. “A human in… weird clothes… I’m sorry. I don’t remember enough to say more.” The human is tall, and carries some kind of staff. Beneath his feet is a treasure chest. Inside the chest, there’s a small, square-shaped piece of paper. On the paper, there’s writing that Yugi thinks he should be able to read, but doesn’t remember how to, and a picture of the statue, but in purple. Also inside the chest, there’s a green, spherical crystal.

“This must be what Mokuba was looking for,” Jou says.

“Yes,” says a voice from behind them, and they all turn around. They had been followed. “Prince Shinx,” says the Absol, a look of devastation on her face. “My name is Isis. I followed you here, I’m afraid. Please forgive me, but I need to speak with you. It’s about the Hunters. I need your help.”

“…Prince?” Jou asks blankly.

“With what?” Atem asks, holding the green orb from the chest.

“Save my little brother,” Isis says. “Please, help me find and save my little brother.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the reasons isis is an absol should be self-explanatory, i feel.
> 
> this is totally one of the segments between big story events where you do mostly unrelated filler missions that you didn't generate online using a wonder mail generator like a cheater or anything, no-siree.


	5. The Runaway Prince

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Team Millenium returns with Isis, but not everyone is in agreement about where to go from there, or what that should mean.

Her name is Isis, and she calls Atem a prince. As they bring her back to Waypoint Town with them, she says that she is an explorer. Jou confirms this. “I’ve heard of Isis,” he says, still looking at Atem with a strange expression. “She’s a pretty famous explorer in some circles. She’s not quite like Mai; Isis will go to places where there’s been a disaster and help out, mostly. Brings a better name to dark-types in general, you know?”

“I’m flattered you think so,” Isis says, as she follows them along. “I only do what is right with the gifts the gods give me.” She does, Yugi thinks, carry herself like an explorer, all confidence and careful footfalls. They’ve sent a message ahead with their explorer’s badges, telling Mokuba that they’d run into someone who needs help and that she wasn’t really part of their mission parameters.

Atem is quiet.

“You want us to save your brother?” Yugi asks, trying to break the silence that’s already falling over them. “If you’re really a well-known explorer yourself… why us, specifically? I can’t imagine we’re that much more capable than you are…”

“Well,” Isis says, “I had heard rumors…” She looks at Atem. “...I had heard rumors that he was in a rescue team now, and I thought… I thought that, perhaps, if I could not convince my brother to come home, the very thing he thinks he’s fighting could help convince him.” Isis continues walking. “He is… influenced, by his Shadow. And I just… I just want him to come home safely.”

“And the Hunters have taken him?” Yugi says.

“…from a certain perspective, yes. He’s loyal to them, but… they have taken him, the little brother I care so much about.” Yugi frowns. “I am hoping, if you can help escort me there… and if the Prince comes as well… that we’ll be able to reach him. That my  _ words _ will be able to reach him. Please,” says Isis, “please, I need you to help me get to him.”

“Okay,” says Atem.

“Yeah, I’m not gonna go around refusin’ requests from adventurers as well-known as Isis,” Jou says.

“…alright,” says Yugi, a touch more cautiously. As he watches Isis, he wonders. He wonders a  _ lot _ . Because while she says that her brother has joined the Hunters, is trapped there, needs their help, Yugi has to wonder: what kind of brother joins an outlaw organization and leaves their older sister looking so devastated? And why does Isis still sound like she’s trying to hide something? Why did she call Atem a prince? And Atem stays quiet, the whole time, as they walk down the mountain to where they can safely take both Isis and the treasure back to Waypoint Town.

* * *

Waypoint Town is still a worried knot of preparation as Team Millenium arrives. It’s windy beyond belief, more so than it has been in days. Yugi would think it felt like rain were they not in a desert. Several Pokemon turn their heads to look at Isis. It’s something about the way she carries herself; everyone who sees her knows exactly the kind of Pokemon that she must be. Mokuba and Anzu both meet them near the town gates. Anzu makes a concerned sound.

“I can’t believe you picked up more strays,” she scolds, before looking over Isis and finally sighing and saying: “I know an empty tent that she can stay in.”

“Oh, don’t worry, please,” Isis says, “I won’t be here long.”

“Isis, right?” Mokuba says. “Why’d you seek out these guys first? You know my brother would…” He pauses. “…here he comes, actually.”

Flying down from the tower is Seto himself. For a moment, his powerful wings seem to block out the entire sun. He lands and the two Pokemon give each other a once-over. Seto turns to Mokuba.

“I told you to keep them  _ out of it _ .”

“Out of my hands, bro.”

“Fine.” He turns back to Isis and stands up, taller and even more intimidating than before. “I am Guildmaster Seto, and both the founder and leader of Waypoint Town. If you have problems with  _ my _ underlings, you will come speak to  _ me _ , not some other idiot.” The strange, swirling stone he’s wearing glows. 

“Idiot?” growls Jou. He’s ignored entirely.

“I suppose you’re here about the Hunters? I’ve done my research. When you’re not saving people from earthquakes and hurricanes, Isis, you follow the most notorious group of thieves and criminals on the continent. I wonder, then, what that makes you?”

“An Absol,” she says quietly. “It’s well known we see disasters before they happen.”

“And yet,” Seto continues, “you don’t show up here until you can get Shinx nearly  _ alone. _ Let me guess: the softhearted fools on Team Millenium have already agreed to try to help you with the task you singled them out for. They’ve barely been adventuring together for a month and a half.” The stone gleams and a strange pink energy briefly swirls around Seto. Yugi hears Atem and Jou both suck in a breath. “You do this when you should know that I couldn’t give a damn about anyone’s status in my town. They’re my explorers, my townspeople, or visitors. His titles mean nothing here, and I won’t let them affect your decisions either.”

“His titles mean something to my brother,” Isis says.

“Atem?” Yugi whispers. “What are they talking about?” Atem clenches his teeth and does not answer.

“Your… brother. Tell me, Isis. You see disasters. What have you seen for Waypoint Town?” The dragon snarls, the energy spirals, and even Mokuba steps back. “And tell me why I can’t crush that future beneath my jaws.”

“I need Atem,” Isis says, stubbornly. “I need the Prince Shinx. Please.”

“He’s no prince here, are you, Shinx?” says Seto, arching an eyebrow. “Anzu.”

“Guildmaster,” Anzu says.

“Show Isis to a  _ visitor’s _ tent. The Guild will decide whether or not we’ll take her request in the coming days. Team Millenium,  _ with me _ .” The pink wisps of energy seem to shatter from around Seto, and he starts to slowly, deliberately, walk towards the Guild building. He turns to Isis. “If you want my explorers, submit a mission like anyone else. And, Isis?” He blows out a small huff of air. With it, Yugi’s startled to see, Seto blows out a bolt of plasma and thunder. Dragonbreath. “If you want us to accept, you’re going to have to tell us more about your… poor, unfortunate brother… than that you need a prince who does not exist here’s help.”

Atem looks like he wants to argue, but Mokuba and Jou both seem to agree on something for once, and start herding Atem after Seto. Maybe it’s the fact that Seto had seemed deadly serious about something in a way he hadn’t before. Maybe Jou felt like Yugi did— off-balance, uncertain, only sure that Isis wanted something from Atem. And Atem… he’d been called  _ the Prince Shinx, _ and Isis had wanted something from him. Yugi wanted to help people. Yugi liked helping people, and he wanted to help Isis, but… he turned to look at the Absol. She continued to stand proud, but as they walked away, she let herself fall into a forlorn expression again.

She was desperate. And Yugi… he didn’t like being selfish, but Atem was nearly the sum of  _ everything Yugi had in the world. _ Yugi quite literally couldn’t remember a time before he’d met Atem, and if everyone else was so concerned by Isis’s desperation, by whatever this thing was that Atem had refused to tell him, by his apparent status… Yeah, Yugi understood herding Atem away for now, and deciding what to do properly later. 

It was selfish. It was really selfish, and as he watches Isis’s face, he wonders if walking away like this is right.

Their deliberate march through town calls attention to them. Honda gives Jou and Yugi a look of concern, and Yugi waves sheepishly. Grandpa also is frowning, but he at least doesn’t look  _ as  _ worried as Honda does. It’s probably because, unlike Honda, Grandpa has tended to trust in Seto a bit more. Other faces watch as well. Yugi can see Mako and Espa watching with curiosity; he can see the bank-keeper Persian swish his tail with some emotion. Then, they enter the tower.

“Mokuba,” Seto says, “take over the missions desk.”

“But Seto!” says Mokuba.

“Please,” says Seto, his voice tense and oddly hoarse. “I’ll fill you in when we’re done.”

“Fine,” says Mokuba, “but you tell me everything about what’s going on immediately after that, you got it?” The Goomy heads to the mission desk. The four of them that remained went all the way up to Seto’s office. The dragon’s own quarters, Yugi realized, looked a lot messier than they had before. The hoarseness in his voice… was the great dragon Guildmaster… as tired as the rest of them were…?

For a while, all four of them stand there in tense silence. Seto unloops the strange stone’s chain from around his neck and places it on the table. Up close, it still isn’t that big, but it radiates power in a way almost nothing Yugi had ever seen before radiated power. The dragon settles to a curled position, where he’s looking almost directly at Atem.

“You’re causing too many problems,” Seto says. “I should kick you out now.”

“I want to go and confront them,” Atem says.

“You don’t have an army, runaway prince,” Seto says, and snorts. “I should have known better than to assume that royalty who ran away did it for any good reason. You’re just an arrogant desert scrap looking for handouts.”

“Royalty?” asks Jou, and Yugi wants to know, too, but he doesn’t want to speak up, he doesn’t want to stretch the tension than it’s already been stretched.

“You haven’t explained it to them? How cowardly,” Seto says.

“I— I was going to,” Atem says. “It wasn’t a big deal. And, besides, I— after I met Yugi, he’s weirder, and I thought, a normal Shinx would get him better acclimated to the world, right? A  _ normal _ Shinx would be better for this than a, a Shinx with baggage.”

“And yet,” Seto says, “here you are. Tell them, or I’ll tell them more cruelly still.”

The room seems to be held in a stillness. Atem sighed.

“…I did, I guess, run away,” he starts. “I didn’t want to tell you about any of it, Yugi, because I wanted to be a normal member of a rescue team, but it is true. In the Obsidian Desert, there’s a temple. There, Pokemon are raised to keep watch over the ruins, and to keep watch over Duality. You see… there, in the Obsidian Desert, there are artifacts and gateways to other realms. If they were thrown out of balance, the whole world could start ending. Or at least, that’s what we’re told. Some of my tutors could even do something like magic, so it makes enough sense to me. Besides, what else explains the mystery dungeons? Oh, and… about those mystery dungeons…”

Atem pauses and shifts his feet. “…no. That’s a bit off-topic. Well, I… I told my tutors that I wanted to see the world, before I ruled as Pharaoh. I wasn’t ready yet, and we all knew it, and it was a rule that I couldn’t take over. Not until I evolved into a Luxray, but it… just wasn’t happening.” He pauses. “My tutors wanted me to stay in the palace. I disagreed. So… I ran off into the desert. I wanted to make it here, so I could join a rescue team and see the world. I figured, if I got a chance to help real people, see the real world, I’d get to know more about it and become better. Maybe I’d even evolve. Either way, I wouldn’t have to stay in the palace where everyone called me ‘Prince’ like I was some kinda failure because I hadn’t grown up yet.”

He starts to pace across the room. “The only valuable from the Palace I have with me, though, is my necklace. My father gave it to me, and it’s likely an artifact of some kind. It’s not the crown, though, and Father— he wouldn’t say what it did. He said that Mahaad— my Mismagius tutor— could tell me what it was when I got older, but that I was never to take it off, not for anything. So that could be what the Hunters are after, now that they’ve come here, and you won’t let me fight them! I know I haven’t evolved yet, but I’m strong, and I’m brave, and it’s my responsibility, isn’t it? Especially after Isis asked for my help. It’s my responsibility to fix whatever is wrong with her brother, especially after she came to me. Especially after she came to me, and bowed in the symbol of my people!”

Yugi watches as Atem’s pacing gets more frantic. “But I don’t want to go back yet, Yugi. I need to fight the Hunters, and be an explorer! With you! After all, if I hadn’t met you in the desert, I would have turned around and given up. But since then, I’ve met you. So I’m not ready to go back, Yugi. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you any of this sooner, but please don’t treat me any differently. I don’t have the Crown yet. I just have my pendant and a desire to stay on Team Millenium.” He turns to Seto and finally stops pacing. He bows his head. “I apologize, formally, for the suffering I’ve brought your village, though.”

“I did,” Seto says, “keep you busy because I thought the Hunters might be after you.” A single wing flap. “I was going to hand you off to her if she had come to me, or if  _ you  _ had come to me with the truth. I am a major political figure. I am not so much a fool as to miss the Crystal Palace’s lost son coming to stay here.” He sighs. “But you didn’t come to me, and neither did she. I don’t appreciate people going behind my back.”

Atem nods. “I understand, but… what does that mean? For me?”

“Team Millenium,” Seto says, “for the next two weeks you are consigned to the guild tower. You can leave with supervision, but  _ only _ with supervision. Otherwise, you will stay in and do administrative work. Mokuba will give you tasks to do, as will I, but you will  _ not _ be leaving.”

“What?” explodes Jou. “You can’t lock us in! We ain’t criminals!”

“You’re in danger,” says Seto, “and would you go against my word? Go to your rooms.”

* * *

“So we’re in agreement,” Yugi is told less than four hours later, “we’re going to sneak out and help Isis.”

Yugi’s heart sinks. “Will you be safe?” Yugi asks.

“You’ll come with us,” Atem points out.

“Still,” Yugi says. “Will you be safe? I know you said that you thought the Hunters might be after you specifically, Atem. Will you be safe?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Atem says. “She’s my responsibility, and she needed us. We need to go and help her. Will you come, Yugi? You don’t have to, but I want you to. I want you to come.”

Yugi thinks about it for a few minutes. “Come on, Yug,” Jou says. “We can’t let Seto push us around!”

“That’s not what I’m worried about,” Yugi says, but he feels selfish, leaving Isis out in the cold. He feels selfish, and he shouldn’t be selfish. “…yeah, okay,” he says, “but we could end up in massive trouble for this. You all need to, um, think about the fact that… didn’t you just say you wanted to stay a rescue team together? Seto was… really mad.”

“We can take ‘em,” Jou says.

“Helping people is more important than staying on a rescue team under the Guild,” Atem says, which is good, because  _ we can take him _ wasn’t really an acceptable answer.  _ We can take him _ failed to acknowledge the truth, which was that they definitely, absolutely  _ could not  _ take the draconic Guildmaster in a fight. “And it’s my duty. Not as a Prince, but as a member of a rescue team that someone’s come to with a mission. We sneak out, we help Isis, and we come back. Seto either lets us stay, or he doesn’t, and we explore without explorer’s badges for a while. It’s more dangerous, but us, together… we can make enough of a name for ourselves that the Guild will  _ have _ to let us back in. Either way, we’ve helped someone who needs our help. Either way, we’ve done something  _ right _ .” He puts his foot in the middle of the three of them, and Jou follows suit.

The sentiment is hard to argue with. So is the conviction in Atem’s voice, too. So Yugi sighs and puts a hoof in with the others. “Like I said then, I’m in, but do you actually know where Isis’s tent is?”

“No,” says Jou, “but Anzu will. Anzu knows all kindsa stuff, and she’s in charge of where people sleep, so she’s gotta know where Isis is sleeping, right? All we gotta do is ask Anzu, and we’ll find out where Isis is, and everything’ll be alright.” Yugi finds it a little doubtful that Anzu will actually tell them where Isis is sleeping. Anzu is normally berating Jou and Honda about being more responsible. Then again, the Azumaril was also friends with Jou and Honda for a reason. She couldn’t be friends with the two of them  _ without _ liking a little bit of chaos and nonsense in her life, and Jou seemed so certain.

“And sneaking out without getting caught? We’re on the third floor of a building, and none of us can fly. We don’t know any other Pokemon who can fly, either.” Yugi feels his tail make a nervous swish. “Also, I have hooves, and there’s basically no way to make them quiet while still letting me keep my balance because I’m just not balanced enough to put cloth on them without slipping I’m sorry I’m super clumsy...” 

“I’ve got a solution for that too!” Jou says enthusiastically. Yugi can’t help but be mildly worried about what the solution might be, given his enthusiasm. “We still have escape orbs, right?”

“Yes,” Atem says. “They’re a very wise thing to bring along in dungeons, in case things start going too south to stay— but what…”

Both Yugi and Atem fall silent.

“…you’re kidding me,” Yugi says.

“I’ve  _ tested it _ ,” Jou says. “They do, in fact, work outside’a mystery dungeons! They send you to the pre-calibrated drop point. We bought these from Grandpa pretty recently, and assumin’ Grandpa hasn’t changed our orbs somehow to drop us here in the Guild, they’ll drop us  _ in Honda’s dojo _ , like they’ve been set to since you two decided to live in the back of Grandpa’s shop. Honda won’t snitch on us, so as long as we keep on waiting until it’s late enough at night…”

“…the escape orb will let us escape the Guild,” Atem finishes. “Jou, you’re a genius.”

“Aw, really? I mean, you really think so? I mean, yeah, of course I’m a genius.” Jou preens for a moment. 

“So, we just need to pick a time then?” Yugi says.

“Later,” Atem says. “The sun will set in only half an hour, but the sun needs to be set for some time, so that the town is as quiet as possible.” He paces about the room, like he has been since they were locked in here. “It’s probably wise to go ahead and sleep now, as we’re unlikely to do much sleeping tonight.”

“That’s true,” says Yugi. “Alright. I’ll take a nap, but only if you promise to go ahead and take a nap too.”

“I’ll keep an eye on the time,” Jou volunteers, “while you two sleep, okay?” He grins brightly. “After all, I’m pretty good at staying awake in general, and Atem doesn’t look like he’s slept properly in  _ months. _ ”

“Thank you, Jou,” Atem says. Yugi waits to take his nap until he’s sure Atem is curled up in the room, safely asleep on one of the beds. The tension in him doesn’t seem to quite leave Atem, even as he sleeps. Still, the Shinx is definitely asleep. A prince. Yugi still hadn’t quite processed that, but… it was okay. Atem didn’t want to be a prince, so Yugi wasn’t going to make him be one. It was really as simple as that.

Yugi bends down on his own bed, closes his eyes, and starts his own nap.

Once he closes his eyes, he dreams of lights refracting through crystals, and an obsidian starry sky, and wishes, and a falling star. Steel snaps through the night sky.

“Soon, Yugi,” assures a voice.

Yugi turns over in his sleep, his feet kicking, but he can’t run away from the stars that blur together in his dreams. When Jou wakes him up again, the dream’s blurry, hard to reach through the haze that is his dreams, but Yugi’s fairly certain, even though the dream’s unclear to him, that whatever had happened in the dream, whatever it was… He didn’t like it much. Or maybe he had? He just remembered that, for as beautiful as the starry sky had been, it had felt foreboding somehow.

He didn’t have much time to worry about it. Even the Guild itself was quiet now. Beneath them, out the window, Yugi could see the candlelit lanterns flicker, keeping the streets bathed in the lights fire Pokemon lit for the town. Even with those lanterns lit, though, there weren’t many Pokemon in the streets at all. It wasn’t quite eerie, it was just quiet, peaceful. It should be less stressful, but honestly, it was just  _ more _ stressful in a lot of ways. After all, the only people breaking the peace of the night were going to be themselves.

“Ready?” Jou says. 

“I guess,” says Yugi.

“Yes,” says Atem.

“Let’s go,” says Jou, and he smashes the orb at their feet. They’re surrounded by a blue light that seems to make a pillar around them, and then the light vanishes, and they open their eyes in Honda’s dojo. The Ryhorn has stumbled over his own feet and is now staring at the three of them with a somewhat wild look in his eyes.

“Arceus,” he says, “what was that? Was that an escape orb? I thought you guys were grounded?”

“I figured out I could use it to get us out of the Guild,” Jou says, pleased. “Don’t tell anyone, got it? You know where Anzu is? She’s asleep at her place, right, not somewhere weird?”

“Yeah,” Honda says, “Anzu’s at her place. You guys are nuts. Where should I tell Shizuka you went?”

“We went to help Isis,” Jou explains. 

“Right,” says Honda, “And I don’t know anything else. Please, don’t tell me anything else, I can’t know it.” He looks at Atem and Yugi. “My idiot friend here didn’t drag you into this, right?”

“It was my idea,” Atem says.

Yugi stays quiet.

“Of course it was,” Honda says. “Right. Well, I’ll be here to sneak you back into town if you don’t take too long. Hell, I’ll even cover for you; I’ll say you went into one of the training dungeons after they notice you’re gone, but that won’t last long as a cover, so I’ll just do what I can, got it?”

“Got it,” agrees Jou. “Thanks so much, Honda. Come on guys, we’ve gotta find Anzu.” 

The three of them leave Honda’s dojo. The streets of town are fairly quiet too. Jou really has chosen a good time; not even a Noctowl or a Hoothoot graces the streets. Jou leads them to Anzu’s tent and whispers in: “You awake? Anzu?”

“…wha?” says Anzu.

“Listen,” Atem says urgently, “we need you to tell us where Isis is staying.”

“You’re gonna go help her, aren’t you?” Anzu says. “Alright, fine,” she says, before they can prepare their arguments for why they’re doing this. (This is good, since Yugi isn’t actually totally  _ sure _ why they’re doing this.) “Here’s the tent plot number.” Jou stares blankly at the paper he’s just been handed. Anzu rolls her eyes. “And here’s some instructions on how to  _ get _ there,” she says, handing him that paper too.

“…you’re awfully prepared,” Atem says.

“You’re new here,” Anzu says, “but… you’ve been hanging out with us for the past month. I know Jou here really well, and I’d like to think I’d learned who you were. In other words, I knew you weren’t gonna leave that poor Absol out in the cold, not really, not even when told directly to by a superior officer.” She shrugs. “So, I went ahead and wrote things up. Go on. Go help that Absol, please.”

“…alright,” says Yugi. “Thank you.”

“No problem,” Anzu says. “Don’t get yourself killed, please? I don’t want to be responsible for that.”

“You won’t,” says Atem seriously, and Anzu looks at him, and finally nods. They follow her instructions through town to Isis’s tent, and prepare to save the day.

* * *

Isis lays regally in her tent. When Atem and Yugi arrive, she stands up, a sweeping motion that seems to pull the world with her to her feet. “Thank you,” she says, “for coming for me.”

“I was not going to leave you to do this alone,” Atem says. “It’s my duty.”

“Still, I thank you, Prince Shinx,” Isis says. “Now, hurry. We must leave town before the Guildmaster realizes we’re gone. I have seen what happens should he attempt to follow us as well.” There’s something dark and mournful in her eyes. “…he cannot know where we are going.” She stands up and starts walking, quickly. Absol is much larger than a Shinx, a Mareep, and a Houndour, so the three of them have to run to try to keep up with her. Still, they manage, and quickly, they’re on the path out of town. It’s the path to the East, that walks parallel to the desert, but never into it.

At night, they’re keeping up a fast-clip pace. At one point, Yugi looks up and tries to ask Isis where they’re going, but Isis doesn’t answer. Yugi wonders if she thinks they’re still too close to Seto to explain. He hopes not. He needs to know what they’re supposed to  _ do _ to save her brother, but all they’re being shown is the path forward. Isis is taking them pretty far down the path in general; Yugi isn’t sure that he likes how far they’re being lead without being told anything about what they’re  _ doing _ .

Finally, though, as the sun starts to rise, as Yugi’s legs start to ache, Isis turns to them. “The Hunters,” she says, “my vision has shown me that they are in a mystery dungeon up ahead. It is known as the Starstruck Cave.” She bows her head for a moment. “It is said to be a fairly dangerous place, but it is also full of psychic-types. Therefore, your companion, Jou, and myself… we should be able to make quick enough work of the wild Pokemon there. Any Hunters who are around, however… we will have to fight our way through them. My brother is unlikely to simply let us approach him without retaliation.”

“Your brother can tell the Hunters what to do?” Atem says, and… oh. That would explain why Isis was being so deliberately vague about what trouble her brother was in, and why she was so determined not to bring the actual Guild into it. If her brother really was one of the higher-level Hunters, then…

“…my brother can do many things,” Isis says. “At the bottom of the cave, I know my brother rests. On the way, though, we may have to fight… Rishid,” she settles on. “Rishid was… an adoption,” she says, “but he clearly still considers Marik a brother. He is an Aggron.”

“Holy shit,” Jou breathes, “your brother really  _ is _ in charge of them, if Aggron listens to him. Hey, uh, Atem, Yugi, you sure this is a great plan after all?” 

“It’s my duty,” Atem says stubbornly. 

“Right,” says Jou, before turning to Yugi. “And I’m gonna guess you aren’t leavin’ him? I don’t know what’s between you two, but I know you look pretty lost when he ain’t around.”

“…I’ve told you I have amnesia, haven’t I?” whispers Yugi. “Without Atem, I don’t think… I don’t think I’d know where I was, or even  _ what _ I was.”

“Of course,” says Jou. “In that case, just ignore our conversation just now,” he says to Isis, “your brother could be fucking Giratina and we’d still be walkin’ straight towards him.” He sighs. “Through a mystery dungeon, where the Hunters have decided to make their base, ‘cause they’re mad people. I don’t suppose you know what all the Hunters have stolen since they were formed, do ya?”

“No,” says Isis, “I’m afraid I do not. I was hoping that, once it was disbanded for my brother, they would simply return them.”

“Yeah, okay,” Jou says. “So they’ve got unknown firepower, especially since they’re known to steal TMs. This is fine; we’ll be fine. If their base is mid-dungeon, the dungeon can’t change shapes too much while they’re in there, so that’s fine too, ain’t it.” He smiles bravely. “We can take on the whole damn Hunters, I know we can.”

“Yes,” mumbles Yugi, “I’m sure we can.”

“Let’s do this, then,” says Atem. “Isis, please, lead the way.”

Together, they step into the dungeon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> seto: dont test me, ill full mega-salamence on all of your asses
> 
> atem: what i heard was "directly disobey you and run off with a super sketchy absol"
> 
> seto: goddammit team millenium,


	6. The Starchild

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Team Millenium's self-assigned mission goes south almost immediately, as these things tend to do.

It isn’t hard to figure out how Starstruck Cave got its name. Upon entering, Team Millenium is  _ immediately _ struck by the cave’s extremely striking interior. The cave is mostly made of black stone. It is lit,= by the strange, luminescent stones that are scattered throughout the walls. The light is eerie and dim, but it glitters in such a striking way that it is also hard to call it anything but beautiful. There are strange, silvery, pale plants that curl around the dungeon. When they’re hit by light, they gleam like metal. It is almost as though they are vines and ferns made of steel rather than leaves.

The cave only gets stranger. Between all of the glowing stone, there are geometric patterns, only differentiated from the rock around them by texture. This means they had to be right up against the walls to notice the strange patterns that were scattered across them, but once they  _ did  _ notice the patterns, well, it is hard to ignore the fact that they’re there. They seem to make angular paths between each of the lit stones, as though there is some far-off power source that the patterns are connecting the stones with.

The whole cave looks as though some alien intelligence had been the one who had constructed it, rather than the imbalance of a mystery dungeon. Yugi wonders if, once upon a time, this place even  _ had _ been a mystery dungeon, or if it was instead some strange home that had been twisted. Or, maybe, instead of an alien home that was twisted, it had arrived this way, a cave that was struck and scattered with stars, already bent to that alien power’s will.

Or maybe it is something else entirely.

The first enemy they run into is a Clefairy. While it’s not the psychic-type they were worried about, they Behyem and Elegem in the cave quickly cover that typing as well. More worrying still are the wandering feral Metang, but with the dark and fire attacks their team can muster, it isn’t too worrying. Yugi is even beginning to feel good about this, two floors in. Sure, as soon as they were deeper into the cave, a strange black mist started to surround them. It made attacks harder to land as they got deeper into the cave, and what was in front of them harder to see. But the cave walls light their path even through the mist.

Bit by bit, they cleared the cave. Isis was a pretty powerful ally; between Night Slashes to take down all the psychic-types and being well and simply  _ practiced _ at being an explorer, the Absol is practically able to clear the dungeon almost entirely on her own with tactical precision. It makes Yugi wonder… what does the Absol want them here for?

As they clear the third floor, Atem asks: “How do you know me?”

“I’m a relic keeper, Prince Shinx.”

“Atem,” he says. “My name is Atem, not Prince Shinx.” He pauses. “A relic keeper… I see.”

“So,” Isis says, “when my brother ran away, I knew I had to find you eventually. I had hoped, though, that maybe, it wouldn’t be so. That I would bring my brother back before I had to turn to one of you. Because I did not want my brother hurt, you see.” She pauses. “When I found out, then, that you were on a rescue team, I was glad. Because I knew for certain then that you would  _ help _ my brother, not hunt him down. For that I’m grateful.” Atem bristles.

“Hunt him?” he growls.

“Oh,” Isis says. “You are young. Perhaps you would not have. My apologies, Prince Shinx.” Isis falls quiet as she begins to follow Atem once more from there. Yugi feels clumsy as she shuffles uncomfortably beneath the weight of those words.  _ Perhaps you would not have. _ Geez. Yugi didn’t know what had gone on between them, and it feels too heavy to ask.

Jou Bites another Elegem. Yugi Thunderbolts a Clefairy. They keep on diving deeper. Somewhere in this dungeon, Marik and Rishid and the Hunters are waiting…

* * *

The first Hunter calls himself “Arcana”. It’s a Mismagius, which causes Atem to briefly freeze up. He’s the one who deals the finishing blow, though. Sure, Jou and Isis are the ones with the super-effective advantage, that ghosts can’t hurt too badly, but as it turns out, Arcana knows Dazzling Gleam. So it’s not Jou or Isis that land the finishing blow, and the Mismagius laughs as Atem uses Bite to cut right through him. As he’s knocked out, he smiles.

“I look just like that tutor of yours, don’t I?” he taunts. Then, the Mismagius is defeated, and that is all that can be said of that.

* * *

The next floor is full of traps.

The first trap is a Monster House. This is the most intimidating trap. Yugi had never seen a Monster House before, but now that he has, he never wishes to again. Once they’d stepped into the middle of the room, Pokemon had appeared, as if from the ceiling. They’d descended around him, a mix of every species found in the dungeon. Their team of four, previously enough to take on anything, was suddenly surrounded by fourteen other Pokemon, all of them out for blood. They’re outnumbered by more than three to one in an  _ instant _ .

At first, they try to fight their way out. They’re utterly surrounded. The walls are horrible, tunneling them so that they can’t run away fast enough, too. It feels like the end of the world, suddenly being beset upon by so many Pokemon that it feels hard to breathe.

And then, Isis whispers to Yugi: “Do you know Heal Bell?”

Yugi says: “I don’t know.”

Isis says: “Then be prepared to use any pure seeds you have.” She then makes a terrible, beautiful trilling sound. It’s unlike anything Yugi’s heard before. It splits his head in some ways, but in other ways, he wants to keep listening. It’s a song, he thinks. About death, about the future, about the shape of the world and the walls it echoes off of. For a moment, Yugi feels swallowed whole by the song.

Then, it’s a ringing countdown in his ears.

“Do you know Heal Bell,” Isis asks again.

“I don’t know,” Yugi says again. “How would I know Heal Bell? I don’t have any  _ bells _ on me!”

_ Three. _

“Did you just use  _ Perish Song? _ ” Jou asks, baffled. “Why would you do that? We don’t have any way to heal ourselves! We’ll just faint right here and either need to be rescued or kicked from the dungeon or, worst yet, kidnapped by the Hunters! We won’t be coming back from this!” 

“The Mareep,” Isis says.

_ Two _ .

Atem growls. “Know your place _ , _ ” he says. “You should know that attacking not only a member of the crown, but that crown’s precious partner, will lead to severe consequences for you.” The growl was shaky, and so is the attempt at authority. Yugi tries to concentrate. There’s a ringing like a countdown in his ears, so he needs to ring the opposite. The opposite of death and the future and the shape of the walls, he needs to ring out life and hope and light and the shape of each person here…

_ One. _

“I suppose we’ll…” Isis starts, and then Yugi hits the orb on the top of his tail against the ground. It rings a strong, resonant note. At once, the ringing from Isis’s song goes away. Both Atem and Jou turn to Yugi, Jou with shock and Atem with pride. Somewhere distant, Yugi supposes, the countdown might be ending, but not right here, not right now, not for him. the countdown has just gone away. It didn’t matter for him.

It did, as it turns out, matter for his enemies.

Yugi’s eyes widen with shock as the enemies all, as though hit by a chime, faint at once. Atem and Jou stare at the collapsed Pokemon.

“…that could have been us too,” Atem says, “if not for you Yugi. We wouldn’t have blended in, either.”

“It is fine,” Isis says primly. “I knew that he would help us.” 

“I didn’t, though,” Yugi says quietly. “I didn’t know I could do that.”

“And now you do,” says Isis, and she helps them walk past the next room full of spike traps and falling bricks without apologizing. Yugi feels like there are bricks in his stomach. Atem is half-growling, but doesn’t seem to totally disagree with Isis. Jou looks indignant.

Next up is another trapped room. It’s full of spinning blades, each of which could easily take off Yugi’s head without much effort. Isis dodges around them, and Yugi is forced to follow. He’s glad he just learned Heal Bell, really, but that had been… a stressful way to learn. He could have been taught when they hadn’t just snuck out of their town and had no way to get support should something go horribly, horribly wrong. He didn’t mind learning under pressure, but only when there was… any safety net at all. Isis could see the future, but that didn’t mean that she actually had a guarantee, right? There was no guarantee that in every future, Yugi learned Heal Bell at that exact moment, or knew Heal Bell all along, or whatever it was that all of this might mean.

In the last room is a massive Red Gyrados that calls himself Strings. Gyrados is not much of a challenge to Atem. The Gyrados says: “Do you trust your allies? Do you really?” and laughs as he’s defeated.

* * *

On the third floor, there’s a Plusle and a Minun. They don’t give their names, but they wear masks. They smile identically, and fight in pairs. They say taunting words about the power of partnership and keep on using moves that cause paralysis, but paralysis couldn’t do much against the might of Yugi’s Heal Bell. The whole team was cured, again and again, of the painful ailment. Eventually, Jou manages to take them down with a Flamethrower.

They don’t say much else after that. They just laugh, and laugh, and tell them that they won’t defeat Rishid.

* * *

They hear Rishid before they see him. He’s tall. Aggron is a large Pokemon, but somehow, once they reach him, Rishid is even taller and more imposing in  _ person _ than the idea of an Aggron was in Yugi’s head. The massive metal Pokemon swishes his tail and stares at them. “I am the leader of the Hunters,” he says. “Turn back now. You may have gotten this far, but you won’t get further.” He lowers his head. “Sister.”

“Rishid,” Isis says, “brother, please, I need you, and I need— I need to help Marik.”

“You’re here to stop him.” Rishid says. “You know full well why he ran away. Why we’re justified.”

“Rishid, please,” Isis says. “I don’t want to fight you.” Yugi notices, with some foreboding, that there’s a stone hanging around Rishid’s neck. The stone resembles the same stone that Seto had been wearing.

Rishid shakes his head. “Marik needs help, but not from you,” he says. “You can’t drag him home. He won’t go there. I won’t go there. Isis, we aren’t going back to being Relic Keepers, no matter what you want from us.”

“Please,” Isis says. “I just want to hear it from you. I just want to understand why you left. Rishid, I don’t know why you left in the first place. I just need to know and understand.”

“No,” Rishid says.

“Please,” Isis says.

For all that Isis had said that having Atem here was vital, he doesn’t seem terribly vital to Yugi. In fact, Yugi rather feels like they were standing on the sidelines of a very important conversation that they really  _ shouldn’t _ have any part in. They shouldn’t be here for this. Rishid is raising his voice now:

“You weren’t there for him!”

“I’m trying to be now,” pleadingly, Isis. “I need to see him again. Please, we’re just here to try to help.”

“You brought the  _ Prince Shinx _ .”

“He’s on a rescue team. I thought, perhaps, if Marik could see that he was wrong…”

“He wasn’t wrong, Isis!” Rishid says. “I followed him because he’s my brother, and I want to protect him. But he’s also right. You have to realize that.”

“Not if he’s going about it like this!” Isis shouts.

“Family drama,” mutters Jou, “boy. That’s exactly what I followed her all the way out here for.” A small pause. “…shit. That  _ is _ what we followed her out here for, isn’t it?”

Atem steps up. “I want to speak to him.”

“You, especially, will not,” says Rishid, calmly. “In fact, I am going to defeat you all, right here.” Pink wisps start to float around Rishid. “I am going to defeat each of you, but especially the Shinx here who is supposedly a Prince. Once I defeat the Prince Shinx, I am going to bring him to Marik. And he will pay for what he’s done to us.”

“What have I done?” Atem says, frustrated, but Rishid just glares. The pink wisps intensify. 

“No,” Isis says, “no, this isn’t the correct path forward. Rishid, you can stop this. It doesn’t have to end this way. We don’t have to fight each other. Let me see Marik, please, it’s been too long since I’ve seen my little brother, I have to know if he’s doing okay, please.” She’s falling apart, Yugi realizes, just a little.

“You brought the  _ Prince Shinx _ here! To our safe place! Why should I let you past without first defeating me?” He snarls, but the pink recedes some. “You brought  _ the Prince Shinx _ here.”

“I foresaw that he would help.”

“With what,” Rishid says, suddenly sounding exhausted. “How could he really help, when he’s the reason why we’re both like this in the first place? Isis, tell me.”

Isis remains stubbornly quiet.

“Isis,” Rishid rumbles, stepping forward. “Then in my capacity as leader of the Hunters, I am going to defeat you all.” Before anyone could move, he slams his feet against the ground. The earth rumbles in an Earthquake, and Yugi makes a horrified, pained sound as he feels the super-effective attack shake him from the bottom of his hooves all the way up into the rest of his body. Around him, everyone else is also in various states of disrepair. The only one that attack wasn’t a painful super-effective blow towards was Isis, and Isis herself didn’t seem all that prepared for the sudden Earthquake.

Rishid begins to stop his feet again and Yugi quickly shoots a Thunder Wave in his direction, slowing him down enough with the paralysis for Atem to Crunch Rishid’s foot. Rishid kicks, not even a proper attack, and it sends Atem flying back towards the wall. Isis finally gets back on her feet, and visibly hardens her heart. She opens her mouth, and once again, the terrible song comes from her lips. 

Yugi hits his tail against the ground the moment she’s done singing her Perish Song, and once again, a Heal Bell resonates across all of the Pokemon in the room. Rishid just laughs, though, and Yugi watches as he quickly uses some variety of seed on himself. “That won’t work on me, Isis,” he says, and then Yugi can’t help but shudder as he manages to bring his foot down through the paralysis, and another Earthquake races across the ground.

As the Earthquake moves, Isis tosses Atem into the air, who shouts as he’s tossed, but dodges the move. Yugi is hit by the Earthquake just as Isis fires a Night Slash right into Rishid’s face. He roars, strangely quiet. Atem flails in the air as Yugi’s vision goes black for almost forty seconds. By the time everything stops spinning, though, Atem is already on the ground again, Jou is shakily standing up, and Rishid is recoiling backwards in pain. Yugi considers what to do. He remembers the steel-types throughout the cave. And then he tosses Jou an oran berry.

“Catch,” he says.

“Thanks,” Jou says, before leaping into the air himself and sucking in a breath. What comes out is not a Flamethrower, but a Fire Blast. Rishid roars and falls backwards with the hit before standing to his feet again, pink wisps starting to surround him once more. He steps up to face them once again, fury on his face.

“No,” says a voice from behind them. They all turn to look. “Stop.”

A Cofagrigus is in the doorway.

“Marik,” Isis breathes.

“Stop fighting, please,” Marik says. “There’s no need for that,  _ sister _ .” Cofagrigus is, Yugi almost immediately decides, a very unsettling Pokemon, especially when it’s gazing upon everyone around him with an expression of disdain. Or at least, that’s what Yugi  _ assumes _ he’s looking on them with; while his eyes are expressive, the slick, metal sarcophagus that makes up most of his body is stationary, and leaves him with a surprisingly frightening grin. 

“Marik,” Isis says. “I am so glad to see you.”

Marik turns to look at Team Millenium. “And you mark your gratitude by bringing  _ them? _ ” He makes a tired sound. “Isis,” he says, “you shouldn’t have.”

“…Marik?” Isis asks, and then, before Yugi can so much as breathe, from the seams of the coffin that makes up Marik’s body, what seems like  _ hundreds _ of black hands stretch out, reaching for each of them in turn. One of the arms reaches Jou first, who growls and bites at it. Then, it passes right  _ through _ Jou’s head. Jou’s eyes go very dark, a purple-ish color, and then, as the shadowy arm twitches, Jou walks next to Marik, growls dully, braces himself, and starts charging flames in his belly. 

“This isn’t an ability most Cofagrigus have,” Marik says, while Yugi takes several steps backwards, not wanting to get hit by the flames but unwilling to stop it by potentially hurting a friend. “I guess it’s one of the only good things that came out of being a relic keeper I ever got.” Jou shoots out a jet of flame, and then, suddenly, Rishid hits Isis dead-on with an Iron Tail. She’s sent flying back as Yugi desperately jumps up. It’s not something his sheep knees or legs are designed to do, but it doesn’t matter that it’s not what he’s meant to do; what matters more is that he manages, just barely, to dodge the Flamethrower. Atem isn’t quite so lucky, hissing as his fur is singed.

Isis groans from the wall. “Marik,” she says quietly, hoarsely, a pained, “brother,” but manages to say nothing else before Rishid hits her with another Iron Tail.

“Sorry, sis,” Marik says, and Rishid looks extremely apologetic as well. At least Rishid leans down after a moment, picks up Isis, and places her out of the way of the fighting. Then Jou starts aiming more fireballs at Atem and Yugi, and they have to scramble and dodge once again.

“I can’t take more hits,” Atem says.

“You can’t take more?” Marik says. It’s still conversational. Jou’s eyes are dark and not his. “ _ You _ want to say that to me? After everything that’s been done to me? After  _ everything _ , you’re complaining? Don’t make me laugh,  _ Prince Shinx. _ ” Atem looks frustrated. Yugi’s starting to feel pretty frustrated too, though. He just wants to know  _ what’s going on _ , and no one’s explaining all the way. Jou Howls, before sending a Dark Pulse in Yugi’s direction that he barely dodges. Rishid stands up and starts to move to do another Earthquake, but Marik raises one of his hands before the hand-tentacles come back, streaming out from Marik.

Yugi feels dizzy as one hits his head. For a moment, he gasps.

He sees a star in his vision.  ** _His fate belongs to me, Marik._ **

_ What’s yours is mine, right? _

His mind goes very blank.

* * *

“YUGI!” shouts Atem. No, no, this is all going wrong! He’d come out here for Isis’s sake, true, but if she had said that her brother was crazy, he would not have stayed. Or, well, maybe he would have— it was his duty, after all, to defeat these Hunters, if they were truly a problem he’d created— but he wouldn’t have dragged Yugi or Jou into it. It was his duty and his duty alone, at the end of the day, no matter how much Yugi and Jou would have protested.

“Yugi!” Atem shouts again. Unlike when Marik had done it to Jou, Atem’s not frozen in place this time. He runs forward, trying to reach Yugi, trying to reach the point where he can help him, or at least try to do  _ something _ . How can he help Yugi, though? He doesn’t understand what Marik is  _ doing _ . He doesn’t understand how he’s supposed to step forward and help out here.

“You see, Prince Shinx,” Marik says, “how easy it is to take them?” Yugi opens his mouth next, but he speaks with Marik’s cadence.

“You definitely deserve this, you know,” he says. 

Atem doesn’t understand. Being a relic keeper is a great honor. They stay in some of the areas of the Glass Desert where there was a particularly powerful relic hidden. They stayed there, and learned the secrets of those relics with their family. They kept those secrets safe, and only to themselves, the Relic Keepers. It was of vital importance that information wasn’t spread; after all, some of the most powerful treasures and relics in his kingdom were given to relic keepers, and those relics could cause untold damage in the wrong hands. It was an honor, and while Isis had become an adventurer instead (something Atem couldn’t really begrudge), Atem thought that Marik should have been glad to have been so honored.

“How?” says Atem.

Jou speaks with Marik’s voice this time. “Do you have any idea what it’s like being a relic keeper?” he says. “We live underground, in caves like these. That’s why all of us are so good at adventuring.”

Yugi takes a threatening step forward. Atem misses Yugi’s violet eyes; they were unusual for a Mareep, but they reminded Atem of something safe. Now, they were filled in and strangely black, just like Jou’s (though Yugi’s seemed to be almost speckled, as though they were simply reflections of the cave around them). From behind him, one of Marik’s hands puppeteers him. Atem doesn’t step back. Rishid looks back at them from where he stands, almost warily. It would seem that, perhaps, the Aggron wasn’t a big fan of Marik’s strange powers either.

“We live underground, with only our family, and it’s forbidden to leave. You see, we’re told that the outside world will hurt us. That the sun will burn us. People will try to lead us away. And why should we do anything other than listen?” It’s Yugi’s voice again. “It’s the only life we’ve ever known. And if we’re afraid of it, does it matter? If we’re hurt, does it matter?”

Suddenly, Yugi  _ Headbutts _ Atem. Atem’s taken too much damage over the past day. That single Headbutt is enough to send him down to the ground. Then, Yugi stomps on his leg. Atem can’t help the yelp, curling inwards as he makes it. Dammit. Dammit. He won’t be able to stand  _ up _ again after that; he’s just barely able to protect himself at all after that.

Marik is speaking at this point. “Did you know,” he says, “that they carve the secrets of our clans into our  _ bodies _ so that we don’t lose them?” Atem can’t look up and see him, or even properly really respond. “Did you know,” he says, “that we’re supposed to protect them with our lives, but at the same time, outsiders aren’t supposed to know about them. Who are we protecting them from? I don’t know, but I’m tired of being hit.” He peers over Atem. “…for the Prince Shinx, you’re kind of a wimp, aren’t you?”

“He really is,” says Yugi. (Not Yugi. Atem needs to remember— it’s not Yugi, not really, not in any of the ways that matter. It’s  _ not Yugi! _ It’s not!) "He's a lot more of a wimp," he says, "than you'd ever expect, given the fact that he's both a prince and a rescue team leader."

"Oh?" says Marik, as though he isn't the one shaping Yugi's words.

"Yeah," says Jou. "He's in charge, or he thinks so, though he has the worst plans. He goes and accepts all the missions for us, but then he has to leave all the rescuing to Yugi. It's really pathetic, honestly."

"Shut up," says Atem. "Shut up, shut up. They wouldn't talk like that!”

"He's not controlling us right now, you know," Yugi says. "Not at the moment. He's just using his powers to make sure we're free to say what we really feel."

"No, no he's not," says Atem. "He's not. He's doing something to you, controlling you."

"Face it, Atem," says Jou. "I thought you was cool before you told me that all you do is run away from what you're responsible for."

Atem remains curled, but he can recognize the sound of Jou's pawprints getting closer to him. "You can't even evolve properly. How... properly pathetic of you." For a moment, it sounds like Jou in Atem's head again. It sounds like the Houndour is... angry at him. Like the Houndour is mad at him. But he hasn't done anything wrong. Has he?

"My father," Marik says, "tried to kill Rishid, once."

"Marik," Rishid says softly.

"No!" Marik says, loudly. "No, I won't shut up about this! Rishid, he tried to kill you! If I hadn't gotten my Shadow when I did, he would have killed you." Atem hurt. "So that's when I decided that the relic keepers? They shouldn't be a thing anymore. There wouldn't be anymore hiding relics; we'd steal all the most valuable ones. And that one around your neck... it would give me the power to change everything. No more trying to kill Rishid for daring to be adopted. No more hitting me. No more carving your secrets into the back of my shell."

"Is that really what your family does?" Yugi asks.

"Shut up," Atem says, "my father..."

"Is dead," says Marik, "was dead by the time I ran away. Oh no, Prince Shinx, they did it all in your name."

Atem whimpers and covers his eyes. He doesn't... this can't be right. It's a great injustice. It's a terrible injustice indeed. But he hurts, and he angers. It's hard to care that Marik was hurt so badly. Not when he's got an unconscious Isis, carefully lifted above the battle, and two beat-up, worn partners of Atem's forcibly dancing along his strings. The problem is, Atem can't stand up to fix this. What was it that Isis had seen? Why did she bring him with her? What could Isis have possibly seen that lead to all of this being okay!

"I'm not even going to knock you out," Jou says, in a tone of voice that's clearly Marik's. (As long as they all talk like that, they're still Marik. As long as they all talk like that, it's mind control. The Cofagrigus is mind-controlling them, he has to be. He has to be. Atem won't accept anything else. He thinks he'll go mad if he does.)

"Yeah," Marik says. "I think he should remain awake for this." Atem hears a strange scuttling noise. He realizes it must be Marik moving across the room.

"Master Marik," says Rishid. "Are you sure about this?"

"I need him to understand," Marik says. "I'm just taking what should be mine. Like he caused everything I wanted to be taken from  _ me. _ That's what I'm doing."

"Thief," Atem says, "villain, thief."

"Maybe so," agrees Marik, "but at least I started from the bottom. What does that make you, Prince Shinx?" A pause. "...Rishid, can you pick him up so he can see us? It's really hard to talk to him when he's lying curled up like that.”

"I'll Bite," hisses Atem.

"No," says Rishid, "you won't." And then, Atem feels himself propped up onto his feet. He's turned to face Marik. Yugi and Jou are still standing there, their eyes empty and black and filled with whatever energy that Marik has filled them with.

"...Rishid?" says Marik.

"Yes, Master Marik?" Rishid asks.

"I don't actually know what to do now," Marikk admits. "I was going to take control of Atem here, too, and do... something. Not take over. I'm content leading the Hunters, honestly. Ransom him? Maybe just kill him? But I... don't know about any of that." He frowns at Atem. "He just looks so... tiny. For some reason, even though I knew he was still the Prince Shinx and not crowned yet, I expected more. I expected to be able to use him to steal the Crown, maybe, or to wreak havoc on the Guild, but..." Marik sighs. "I just want to run my criminal empire in peace." Yugi and Jou sigh in erie harmony along with him. "Is that really so much to ask?"

"Yes," says Atem, growling. He's furious. He can't believe Marik had captured him. He can't believe he can't do anything right now. He has to be able to do  _ something,  _ right? He has to be able to... to fight back... desperately, he lets static build up in his fur and then Discharges it, hoping that the wild electrical outburst will hurt Rishid. It does, but it also hits everyone in the room. Jou sways on his feet and almost falls over entirely. No, no, no, he doesn't normally hit allies with that attack–

He doesn't normally hit–

"Ow," says Yugi. "All I have to do is criticize you, and you attack me, huh?"

"Yugi," Atem says, half-broken and too exhausted to try to explain anything else. Everything hurts. It feels like someone has shoved mud and coal down his throat.

"I really don't know what to do with him," murmurs Marik. (He might be distressed. Atem doesn’t  _ care _ .) "Isis, I was... well, I was just going to leave her outside, she wants to take us home and I can't let her do that, I can't let Father near us again, but I didn't want her too badly hurt, but..." 

" **What if** ," says a tiny voice that echoes across the entire room.  **"What if you left him to me, my dear light side."**

Atem looks down and stifle a gasp. The Pokemon he's looking at is tiny. They're dwarfed by Cofigragus, by Aggron, and is even Mareep. But they radiate power. Their eyes are closed, including, Atem is relieved to see, the eye in the center of their chest. They have a yellow, star-shaped hat, off of which red tags hang. They have two yellow... things... like ribbons, really... hanging down from their back. Their body is somewhat off-white, almost a pale rose color. They're smiling. On a different member of this Pokemon's kind– if there even IS another one of this Pokemon in the world– perhaps it would be cute, but the small steel-and-psychic type is showing far too many  _ teeth _ to be called anything but frightening. 

They lazily open one red eye.  **"I am fairly certain I know what to do with him. Hello, Atem. My, aren't you a long way from home."** The star-child, the wish-granter, the steel swarm laughs. Jirachi laughs. ** "I didn't expect to see you here, really. I thought our dear sister would be smarter than to leave you to me. Unless– oh, she ** ** _saw_ ** ** something! How delightful. I wonder what it was?" ** Jirachi lazily floats into the air, giving Atem a once-over.  **"For one, if you're here– ah, Marik. You really have taken one of my toys."** Jirachi hovers down to peer at Yugi. The legendary gazes into each of Yugi's eyes, and then at the scarf Atem had bought him. " **This truly is hilarious. Both halves, to meet here, one taken from the other... to think I can't even raise the stakes. I'm actually getting ** ** _along_ ** ** with Marik, this time, and I'm lazy. This is so much easier to deal with than when we hated each other, you know. I get to have so much more fun!"**

"Jirachi," says Atem, through the pain. "I don't... understand... Jirachi, why..."

"I found them," Marik says. "Back when I was still underground, and hurting so badly. I found an artifact. It was called, it turned out, a  _ Star Shard. _ They're quite rare, most of the time."

**"He used it and I came here,"** Jirachi says.  **"I have to say, it's been an absolute BLAST actually getting to know Marik this time around as his protector! These days he even ** ** _appreciates me._ ** **" ** He's still examining Yugi. Rishid seems frozen in place, so Atem starts to shake and squirm, desperately trying to break free from Rishid's grasp. He has to get to Yugi. He’s decided he officially no longer cares what the rest of this story is; he  _ has to help Yugi. _ Nothing else matters so much at all.

And once he does? He’s going to make them  _ pay _ . He’s not sure how, but he will.

**“I’d honestly suggest making them fight,”** Jirachi says.  **“It’s hilarious watching how ** ** _upset_ ** ** he gets whenever he has to hurt his precious ** ** _Yugi._ ** ** Or, that’s what I would suggest, but… ugh, it seems so ** ** _boring_ ** ** now, doesn’t it? Yugi would hurt him first. And he doesn’t even know who I am to know why I’d hate him!”** Atem struggles again.  **“Not that I do anymore, really, he’s just still really funny to mess with. I have new ways to spend my time.”**

Jirachi closes the single red eye they’d had cracked open.  **“My dear other personality, I think it’s up to ** ** _you_ ** ** to decide what to do after all. You could give him to me, but…” ** Jirachi floats down and tilts up Yugi’s chin.  **“…I already have ** ** _one_ ** ** half of the equation. I’m very selfish, but when you made your wish, we ** ** _did_ ** ** promise that what was yours was mine, and what was mine was yours. It feels almost ** ** _too easy_ ** ** to take both now.”**

Another pause.  **“You will be giving me Yugi, though, darling. You know how I am about wishes.”**

“Of course, my Shadow,” murmurs Marik, before turning to Atem and sighing. “I could do a lot of things from here, but honestly? Killing you and stealing your necklace is best. I give Yugi to Jirachi, I let the dog here go— I don’t need him for more than just distressing you anyway— and then I put my sister somewhere safe. She’ll hunt me down again, but honestly, I’m wearing her down more by the day. It won’t be long until she doesn’t particularly care about the Hunters being criminals any longer. After that, I guess we can be a happy family, playing nest together until someone remembers the mess that was how my Shadow came into the world…” Marik moves across the room. It’s the equivalent of pacing.

“The Hunters don’t normally kill much,” Marik says. “Killing you would be a shame.”

Rishid says: “Master Marik,” quietly. “Just take his necklace, and make Yugi tell the absolute truth, and let him leave. It won’t… you won’t have to bloody your hands again.”

“I…”

**“Oh, you’re such a ** ** _wuss_ ** **,” ** mutters Jirachi.  **“Do you need me to do it? Trust me, I would… deeply enjoy it, killing him for you.”**

“No!” shouts Marik. “No, I’m— I’m not a killer.”

**“You’re everything else, though.”** If Jirachi’s eyes were open, Atem suspects they’d be rolling them, but at least Marik is giving him more of an opening to fight back.  **“You’re taking far too long. I wonder if this is what your sister saw? That you’d hesitate, let them all go, see how ** ** _loyal_ ** ** they were to each other and feel guilty? Well, don’t. Yugi is one of my toys, remember? I take ** ** _especially_ ** ** good care of my toys.”**

“What… what do you want with… with Yugi,” Atem chokes out.

**“Wouldn’t you like to know? But— he doesn’t remember for a reason~!” ** Suddenly, both of Jirachi’s eyes are wide open.  **“He won’t remember ** ** _this_ ** ** either.”**

“I don’t want to kill him,” realizes Marik. Then, above them, Isis stirs.

“Brother?” she whispers.

“No,” says Marik, “you aren’t supposed to be awake again…”

“Brother,” whispers Isis, “I won’t… I wasn’t here to… take you back… I just wanted to… see your face, one last time.”

Atem is held still, confused and angry. Yugi stands still. Jirachi has moved to be practically _hugging_ poor Yugi. Marik stands still. Atem doesn’t understand. Why does Isis still care so much about this… this… he was trying to kill him!

**“…you really don’t wanna kill anyone, huh. Ugh, you make things so much more difficult, don’t you?” ** Jirachi lets go of Yugi.  **“Well, you ** ** _did_ ** ** wish for me to keep you safe, my dear other personality. And I ** ** _suppose_ ** **, to keep my promise, I should tell you that we need to leave. Guildmaster Seto, you see, is here, and a Mega Salamence is nothing to sneeze at, even for a legendary Pokemon like myself.”** The Jirachi looks up at Atem.  **“As for you… it is better if you don’t die. I guess. I really don’t hate you, you know. I have my ** ** _own_ ** ** games to play. We’ll likely meet again.”**

“W- wait!” shouts Marik. “My, my sister, the other Hunters!”

**“We’ll rebuild,”** says Jirachi.  **“Come on. You want me to keep you safe? Well, we ** ** _did_ ** ** agree— at all other costs.”**

“Bring her too,” Rishid says.

**“You,” ** Jirachi says,  **“you I still hate.”** Still, Rishid drops Atem to the ground. Atem is pretty sure he feels bones breaking. His head is spinning.

“Don’t,” Atem says, “run from me… Don’t…”

**“We’re giving your precious pet dog and pet personality back, don’t worry, Yami Yugi.”** Atem has no idea what Jirachi is talking about. He’s never used that name. He doesn’t even know what that name means. He and Yugi are both electric-types, but that’s their only similarity, isn’t it?  **“He still has things to do. Although, who’s gonna fucking care if I decide he doesn’t? I could keep you all here, you know. Take you with us. I’m just not going to.”** Their terrifying smile widens. The eye in the center of their chest opens, and it’s a horrible gold.  **“Who’s the king now?”**

All at once, the relic keeper siblings vanish. Yugi and Jou both collapse. A roar sounds from above. Atem’s vision goes black.

* * *

When he wakes up, he and his teammates are draped on Seto’s back, flying down the same path they’d walked down with Isis only this morning. Yugi is also awake, and his eyes are violet again.

“What happened?” Yugi asks, the moment he sees Atem is awake. “What did I do?”

There are so many ways Atem could answer. There are so many questions he has for the mysterious amnesiac Mareep, too. There are too many people who know his name. There’s a Jirachi who was overly familiar with him. There’s the feeling that maybe, they’re both in too deep over their head, individually too wrapped up in problems the other one had created for them. It’s not a good feeling; Atem wants to trust Yugi with his whole damn heart. But whatever had just happened showed that Yugi, maybe, couldn’t be trusted at all.

Or maybe it was Atem that was still a failure. After all, if he’d been a Luxray, maybe he could have held all of this back. If he was king, maybe he would have known enough about Marik to rebut his statements, and save him like Isis had wanted. If he’d followed his duty to his people earlier, maybe Marik would have never tried to hurt Yugi.

Yugi would still be buried in the desert, sure, but when someone investigated the Oasis, they would have found him, and they would have taken him in. They would have protected him.

So what Atem says is: “Nothing, Yugi.” He smiles. “You didn’t do anything to worry about at all.”

Yugi frowns, and turns over in his sleep, and Atem fails to ignore the feeling that maybe nothing will ever be alright again after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is the first appearance of what is probably, ah, my most _esoteric_ pokemon choice in this story...
> 
> atem, before the mission: okay this mission is my duty, i can handle it  
atem, after the mission: new rule, when yugi is concerned i just go ahead and assume i can't handle it. what the fuck? what the fuck.
> 
> someone save all these self-sacrificing idiots from each other


	7. The Darkened Skies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After their ill-fated mission, Team Millenium doesn't get much time to rest, because the world is still out of balance...

When they return, the rumor in town is: the Hunters were decimated by Guildmaster Seto being  _ serious _ for once. Yugi’s fairly certain this one is true, since itis Seto who had rescued them from the leader of the Hunters. (Marik… Yugi couldn’t remember enough of what he said, but he’d seemed… everything he’d said suggested there was something more going on. Once again, Yugi wants to resolve not to fight. He shouldn’t  _ have to fight _ .)

He’s pretty sure that the Hunters had known who they were. But he doesn’t remember anything else. He was mind-controlled, he knows that now, and so does Jou. The only people who know what went on while he was mind-controlled are Atem, Marik, and Rishid, and none of them are saying much. Atem just keeps on saying nothing important happened while Yugi keeps on seeing stars and bad ideas in the back of his head. His heart hurts. It’s not that Atem is lying. (Atem is lying.) It’s more that Atem feels the need to lie, which means that something happened while Yugi was out. Something  _ important  _ happened while Yugi was out of commission, and Yugi has no way to figure out what it is. 

Seto isn’t happy, anyway.

“You  _ idiots _ ,” hisses Seto. “Fools and idiots. If you all hadn’t done what you did, things would have been  _ fine _ .” The dragon curls around them. “The only reason you aren’t out on your asses is that you didn’t attack any fellow Guildmates. What you did was out of misplaced  _ duty _ . Your duties are to  _ me. _ Good luck doing anything unsupervised from now until whenever I see fit. If  _ any _ of you so much as  _ breathe _ out of town without telling me first, you’re done. You’re going home.”

Not even Jou argues.

“We fucked up, Yug,” Jou whispers to him as they walk, in shame, to the elevator. “I shouldn’t’a shown Atem how to sneak out. That was way beyond us, but I showed him how to do it anyway.” The dog plods, his head hung miserably. “I wanted to show Kaiba that I was good, even if I ain’t some fancy dragon. Look how that turned out.” Atem walks ahead of them. He keeps glancing back at Yugi, something unreadable in his eyes. Yugi wants to say it’s concern. God, Yugi hopes that it really is concern. “We got our asses  _ handed _ to us. Wonder what the hell Isis wanted out of us, anyway?”

“I don’t know,” says Yugi. “Maybe she was seeing something wrong.” It’s steel that echoes behind Yugi’s eyes. Steel and stars, every time he closes them.

“We fucked up so badly.”

“So did I,” Yugi says. “Something was wrong, and I didn’t try to fight you harder. Fight Atem harder. Fight  _ either of you _ harder. I should have, though. I should have done something, because it— it feels like this is all my fault.”

Atem pauses where he’s walking. “You’re both being stupid,” Atem says, finally. “I’m the Prince Shinx. I’m the one who had a duty, and I’m the one who let that duty fall apart.”

Neither Yugi nor Jou know how to argue with that. 

They got their asses handed to them, alright, and now Atem is lying. He’s still smiling with that soft, fond smile in Yugi’s direction, so Yugi hadn’t somehow fucked  _ that _ up too, but everything’s wrong; everything hurts.

The town feels jubilant. 

Yugi doesn’t.

When Grandpa sees them again, he hits both Atem and Yugi over the head. Jou gets out of it; Jou, Grandpa explains, isn’t one of his tenants, and therefore Grandpa doesn’t feel any pressure for Jou to, say,  _ behave properly _ under his care. Atem and Yugi sneaking away was something else entirely. Yugi has no idea how to fish for how Anzu and Honda are doing, but later, they visit the dojo when Grandpa isn’t working them to the bone at the shop in an attempt to keep the two of them busy. They’re fine. Yugi is relieved, and Jou is even more so. It would seem that Seto hadn’t guessed who had give away Isis’s location, or, if he did suspect, had decided that doing anything about it wasn’t worth it after all. Yugi was glad. They shouldn’t be punished for his team’s bad decision-making.

For several days, they’re grounded. Since the Hunters were, at least supposedly, decimated by Seto, there weren’t as many outlaws around. Seeing the Mega Salamence in the skies was a bit too frightening for the average outlaw, so they were laying low. Seeing Salamence pissed off, in fact, was enough for  _ Team Millenium _ , too— they hadn’t walked back into the Guild since they’d been kicked out by the dragon, and Yugi felt it was unlikely they  _ would _ go back until someone summoned them.

Instead, Yugi just worked in Grandpa’s shop.

Atem did sometimes, too. Whichever of them wasn’t working in the shop would help Jou and Shizuka collect Fire Stones from around their pack’s territory— apparently that was how they made money? Which was pretty cool, honestly— or train in Honda’s dojo. The more people trained with Honda, the more helpful it would be for Honda’s business in general, the Ryhorn assured them. After all, apparently it helped open up the training dungeons further.

As a result, though, Yugi and Atem are normally only in the same place at the same time at night. Yugi isn’t sure what to say to Atem. They talk like they always have, but there’s some kind of rift there now. It’s not because Atem is a prince, though Yugi still hasn’t processed that. It isn’t even quite because of the fact that, from the little of Marik and Rishid’s speech Yugi had picked up, Atem’s kingdom had done some bad things to people. Yugi could trust that Atem was a good person. It wasn’t really even that Atem was lying and saying nothing was wrong when everything felt wrong all at once.

(Yugi feels dizzy at night, and saw steel and stars, and when he wakes up, tail thrashing, Atem watches, with an expression Yugi had no idea how to read, before frowning softly and placing a paw over Yugi’s chest. When he thinks Yugi is asleep (but Yugi wasn’t really, not yet), he keeps apologizing. But for what? Yugi doesn’t understand a lot of things, he was realizing. Amnesia was exhausting, and Yugi doesn’t... he doesn’t want to keep on losing time to mind-control and nightmares.)

It isn’t that Atem was apologizing. It isn’t really even the nightmares. It isn’t that they didn’t see each other much, when Grandpa only needed one of them at a time so it only made sense for the other one to go do odd jobs around town. It isn’t even that sometimes, Atem would come back from the dojo, nearly in tears for reasons that Yugi can’t explain and Atem refuses to explain. It isn’t… it isn’t anything. It isn’t anything Yugi can fix. It’s everything at once, and it strings that a gulf is growing between Yugi and the Shinx that had saved his life.

Some days, Yugi wanted to ask Atem:  _ Was it worth it? _

_ Whatever it was, was it worth it? _

Jou, at least, is talking to both of them. He’s a good friend; he wouldn’t share anything shared in confidence. That isn’t how Jou rolled. But every time Atem frowned in Yugi’s direction, Jou would sigh, and say something like: “He likes your smiles more, you doofus.” Yugi appreciates it, because it’s true; he prefers Atem smiling so much more to Atem in pain, or frowning, or looking at Yugi like if he could just look a little closer, he could figure out every secret of the world and then some.

Jou is fun, too. He fully admitted to Yugi that, for all that he said he wouldn’t tell Yugi anything Atem didn’t want Yugi to be told, Atem hadn’t told him, either, what had happened while they were brainwashed. “He feels guilty,” Jou says rather certainly, and that seems right. At least Jou seems criminally incapable of giving people weird cold shoulders. Jou is way too warm, and open, and genuine for that, so he drags Yugi and Atem to dinner with him and Anzu and Honda as frequently as they can, but…

They’re still grounded. They’re still trapped in town, and Atem is still looking at Yugi like he’s mourning something. But Yugi’s pretty glad he has other friends now, too. They’re a three-man team, in a lot of ways. Sure, he and Atem have the most drama, but…

“Jou,” Yugi says, leaning over Grandpa’s counter one morning, “have I ever told you how happy I am that you aren’t a lost prince, or an amnesiac, or something? Do you have any secret destinies you haven’t told any of us about? You don’t, right?”

“Nope,” says Jou, kind of amused. “I mean, uh, my dad abandoned mom years ago? But I mean, he was a dick, and Shizuka almost bit off his tail, it was freaking badass, so I don’t really need revenge or something. I might need more of them berries again, when the forest has got more of them, but until then… nope, no secrets or like, destinies here.”

“Thank the gods,” Yugi says succinctly. “We need at least one normal team member here on Team Millenium.”

Jou laughs, but seriously, Yugi’s glad. Without Jou’s stable influence, he’s not sure he would have started talking to Atem again at all. It’s not normal talking, and Yugi will always have to know: Atem lied. Atem  _ lied, _ and about something important. But it’s because he feels guilty. It’s because everything’s a mess for Atem, too. And up there on Seto’s back, flying back into town, trying to say to Yugi something as tremendous as whatever it was that Yugi had done… that must have been frightening beyond belief.

So Yugi tries to put aside the gap. Yugi tries to push away the feelings of pain. Yugi decides they’re going to keep on going.

Yugi also decides that if anyone tries to tell him Jou is useless, ever, Yugi’s going to shock them with prejudice. That includes Seto. The Guildmaster better watch out, because even a Mareep will have his day someday, you hear that? And Seto’s part flying, so he’ll never see Yugi coming, and then he’ll have to take the hit—

(He gets a laugh out of Atem when he says this, and he’s glad. It’s the first time Atem has laughed since their ill-fated attempts to help Isis.)

* * *

“I still can’t believe Guildmaster Seto beat the Hunters,” says one townsperson.

“I know,” says another. “You think that with the rescue teams bringing back all the stolen relics to where they’re supposed to go, mystery dungeons will stop forming so quickly?”

“Yeah,” says another. “I bet.”

Yugi frowns. It’s going to rain again. It hasn’t been sunny for a few days, and he’s tired. He likes the sun better, he thinks, than the rain.

* * *

“Weird weather,” Honda says when Yugi comes to train with him. “It’s practically sunnier inside the dungeons than out of it, and my training dungeons have random weather!” The Pokemon laughs, but Yugi only stares for a few moments before sighing. 

“…it’s been foggy, or raining, or even hailing for almost a week,” he says.

“Probably just the relics being put in place weirdly.”

“Not… you don’t think it’s Marik, do you?”

“Nah,” says Honda. “Not even a very angry Cofagrigus could do this much damage this quickly.”

Atem, as he leaves the dojo past Yugi, bows his head for a moment.

“…no,” says Atem. “Not a Cofagrigus.”

* * *

Team Millenium finally walks back into the Guild on a day that it is snowing. Town is still almost celebratory, but Yugi feels… bad. Every night, he now dreams of night skies he can’t see. Mokuba greets them at the door. “Finally,” he says. “I know you guys were grounded, but geez, weren’t you the team that ran away to do an unsanctioned mission? I thought you’d be chomping at the bit to try again, even if you did upset big bro. I mean, your dog never cared before!”

“I am zen,” Jou says. “Your insults can no longer move me.”

“Listen,” Mokuba says. “As we’ve been returning relics, the weather’s gotten, like, super weird.” Yugi thinks of the snow outside. “We’re on the edge of the desert, but we’ve hardly seen any sun. We aren’t the only area affected by this. Seto thinks that maybe, because the relics we’re putting back affect Duality somehow, that we’re knocking around the balance of the world or something?” Mokuba makes a motion that’s probably a shrug, though it can be a little hard to tell what a shrug is on a Goomy. Given that Goomy… doesn’t have arms… suddenly, Yugi is hit with the fact that Mokuba must have to work pretty hard to actually get the mission boards put together without hands.

Huh. 

“Since the weather’s been so weird,” Mokuba explains, “we’ve had a lot of rescue requests. There have been mudslides, floods, or even just people trapped in unexpected mystery dungeons in the fog. So it’s a good thing you guys have come back, because we need you to go out. Your new mission? An independent explorer, Oricorio, also known as Mai, has informed us that she needs backup in an undiscovered mystery dungeon. A mudslide due to the unusual weather has blocked the exit to the dungeon, which means that Mai’s stuck in there for now. She needs someone with an escape orb to come help get her out. So, here, and escape orb.” Mokuba hands it to them. “You’ve met her before, right? Mind you, she changes forms from day to day, and since she was in an unknown dungeon, she’s probably in her ghost-type form, as opposed to whatever form you saw her in before… eh, she’s still pretty unmistakable, right? There aren’t that many Oricorio explorers around these days.”

“Right,” says Atem, dubious.

Mokuba smiles. “The dungeon’s called the Fogbound Cave. You shouldn’t take too long. I’ve been told to tell you that if you aren’t back within the day, I have permission to hit you!” Mokuba laughs. “I have a pretty good Dragonbreath, too, so don’t test me! Good luck!”

“Thanks,” says Yugi, because it’s polite, rather than because of the threat. 

They head out as soon as they get the mission, because Yugi  _ does _ remember Mai, and Atem had been kind of fangirling over her. The Fogbound Cave, as it turns out, is not really in the desert, but instead up a mountain near the desert. It’s not too bad of a walk to get there, and upon getting there, the cave itself isn’t awful. The main problem is that it’s full of fog. Fog, Yugi quickly decides, is actually the worst. It makes all of his moves less accurate, which would be  _ less _ of a problem if it didn’t also make  _ everyone _ less able to see what’s happening. Yugi’s gotten a pretty good handle on how electricity works and how to throw it around, but when it doesn’t hit the correct place and none of his teammates can actually see it coming...

As they walk through the cave, Atem grows more and more tense.

“It’s just a normal mission,” Yugi points out.

“Since when have we had those?” Jou says, and Yugi takes the moment to glare at him.

“It’s just a normal mission,” Yugi repeats. “Rescue missions and outlaw apprehensions are our bread and butter. I mean, that’s our job, right? And while I can’t  _ see _ anything, most of the enemies here haven’t really been much? Especially not in comparison to the enemies in previous dungeons.”

“I know,” says Atem. “That’s what I’m afraid of.” Yugi… has absolutely  _ no idea _ what to say to that. “It’s nothing compared to previous dungeons, but Mai came here and became trapped. She’s an expert. If she’s an expert, and she got trapped here, I can’t imagine that we’ll do but so much better…”

“We’re just ferrying an escape orb, dude,” Jou says. “I know that things can seem kinda intimidating after a failed mission, but it was a mudslide that trapped Mai in, not some like, conspiracy of Pokemon. We aren’t gonna run into another Marik here, so lets just go ahead and relax, okay?”

“Yeah,” Yugi says, as he finally manages to hit an attacking Staravia with an attack. (The Staravia hadn’t been capable of successfully attacking  _ him _ , either, so it evened out.) “If something weird happens on this mission, it’s not anyone’s fault, and, uh, it doesn’t seem too likely either. So don’t worry about it so much.”

“Okay,” says Atem, quietly, but he keeps on looking through the fog like he’s  _ waiting _ for something. 

They make it to where Mai is. Whereas before she’d been a red bird, this time she’s a pastel purple. Upon seeing them, she smiles. “Hello, boys,” she says. “Mind helping a lady out here? The mountain isn’t used to this kind of rain.”

“No problem,” says Jou, looking a little enchanted, and before Yugi can turn to Atem and say  _ see, that was all it was from the very beginning _ , the blue light of an escape orb appears, and they’re brought safely back to town. It was, all-in-all, about as bog-standard of a mission as they got, if you ignored that they were rescuing a more experienced explorer in weird weather in an unknown dungeon. It had been a freak accident though, and nothing else. After all, no Pokemon could really control the weather for long, and even those that could only could in localized areas. A freak accident.

* * *

But… there sure are more and more freak accidents these days.

Mokuba keeps calling them in for missions. “A couple,” he says one day, “of Luvdisc, that had fallen in love, they’re super cute? Anyway, they got lost in the fog and stumbled into a mystery dungeon they didn’t know was there. Must not have been put on the maps correctly.” The mission is another bog-standard one. A blizzard starts, though, while they are out in the dungeon, and the dungeon changes from wading through waste-deep water to, bit by bit, trying not to freeze to death while scaling along the walls. The Luvdiscs are fine, if frightened; they’re hardly explorers, and while the dungeon is mid-level, it is well beyond them. They profusely thank Team Millenium and promise to be more careful while the weather is still strange.

Another day, he says: “A clan of lake-bound Poliwag were stranded when their lake flooded. We’ve agreed to help with the cleanup.” That day, they spend solemnly weaving reeds together, and looking at the remains of the small home the family had built. It was ruined totally by the flood. The water-types smile, though, and tell them that, once the sun came out so they could dry off some of the reeds, they’d be able to put back together their home, good as new. Atem stares at the reeds and he weaves them together, like they held the secret answers to the world, and Yugi is struck by how human he looks.

Mokuba tells them: “Some Hippopotas out in the desert came to us instead of the Palace. They fell into a sinkhole that formed a mystery dungeon in the rain.” Digging them out takes ropes, patience, and effort to tell them apart from the  _ other _ Hippopotas in the sinkhole that had been generated by the dungeon. By the time they come out of it, they’re muddy and tired. Atem tries to hide his face the entire time. They return the Hippopotas to where they belong.

Mokuba says: “An explorer was overwhelmed in a thunderstorm.” Mokuba says: “A jungle was torn up by a tornado, and we need to help relocate its residents.” Mokuba says: “A snowdrift trapped several fire-types who can’t handle the cold safely inside of it. It’s urgent, go fast.”

In town, people are still celebrating. But another week passes, and the sun doesn’t come out, and inside the Guild, the explorers, Mokuba, and even Seto, in the brief moments Team Millenium see him, are letting themselves feel tired and worn down again. “I don’t get it,” says Jou. “I mean, disasters were gettin’ more common. That’s one of the things the Duality was causin’, by going all out-of-whack. Disasters more common, bad Pokemon more common, mystery dungeons more common. But aren’t we returnin’ the relics that are supposed to fix that?” He shudders. “I might be a dark-type, but I like sunshine sometimes, y’know? Even when it  _ ain’t _ droppin’ something from the sky, though, all it is these days is way too cloudy.”

Mokuba, quietly: “One of our explorers, calls himself ‘Bandit Keith’, because of course he does… Anyway, he’s a Braivary, got in way over his head, and I’m gonna need you to go retrieve him.” Mokuba says: “Relief efforts at a nearby dam were attacked by some idiot robbers, and I need you to go kick them out before the dam collapses.” Mokuba, nearly crying—

“Big bro has… hasn’t come back from his mission yet, to the Frosted Woods. He’s… really weak to ice… and it’s been hailing there for, for  _ weeks. _ ” Mokuba swallows. “He just had to return a gem he got from the Hunters’ hideout. I mean, Articuno wasn’t gonna be pleased it got taken, and wasn’t pleased that one of us was going to put it back, but Articuno shouldn’t… shouldn’t just attack my brother.” Mokuba looks up at them. “We’re spread thin. The Hunters leave and the world becomes a natural disaster, huh? You’re… you guys should be able to cross the Frosted Woods, easily. Big bro should be able to too…”

“Mokuba,” says Yugi, but he doesn’t know what else to say. 

“It’s, it’s probably the hail,” he says. “There was a massive snowstorm. He probably got pinned in. So that’s… that’s probably all…”

“We’ll find him,” Atem says.

The town still feels like it’s trying to be jubilant, as they leave for the Frosted Cave, but maybe even the town itself is beginning to realize something is wrong. True to Mokuba’s word, the dungeon isn’t difficult to clear. Sure, the Abomasnow, the hail, the Mamoswine, the Lapras, and the Froslass would be pretty intimidating to a lot of explorers; the large collection of fully-evolved Pokemon would take a lot of effort to take down. The rumored Articuno that guarded both the treasure and the exit was a deterrent, too, but Jou’s fire typing could take on most of the dungeon, and Atem and Yugi together could normally take down any of the kind of uncommon Lapras when they came across them. Between that and how many missions Team Millenium had been running, they didn’t have to worry too much.

“There’s definitely something wrong here,” Atem mutters, and Yugi can’t disagree anymore.

“I’m sorry,” Yugi says on instinct.

“For what?” Atem asks.

“Everything, really,” Yugi says. “Something happened, and you won’t tell me what, and that’s… okay, but… whatever it was hurt you. So I’m apologizing, because whatever I did  _ hurt you _ , and I’m your friend, and friends shouldn’t be hurting each other.” 

“You didn’t do anything,” Atem says.

“Then why are you, you like this?” Yugi asks.

The hail is drifting down slowly here, but the ice across the canopy forms a roof over their heads. It feels like they’re walking deeper into a coffin of ice. The Frosted Woods are creepy enough when it has not been devoid of sunlight for weeks; now, it casts shadows as they walk. Maybe the snow should feel pretty, but right now it just feels ominous. Yugi doesn’t like it much.

“I’m worried,” Atem admits. “Something did happen. Marik… is very angry. And I’m furious at him, though. He  _ hurt you _ , and that should be unforgivable, but… he also… was hurt. He was hurt horribly. So I can’t help but think that in some regards, maybe he was right. But now, all of these awful rescues are happening. I think the Duality is broken far beyond what the Hunters are doing to it. Were doing to it, I mean. I think it’s my duty to try to fix that, to try to do my job as a prince, but I still can’t go back yet. I want to stay here. And I’m starting to think the world is better off  _ without _ a Prince Shinx.”

“Oh,” says Yugi. “That’s a lot.” He considers. “I don’t have an answer. I think that, probably, what you were doing was important, though, but that being happy, that’s really important too.”

Ice falls around them.

“I care about you, though,” Yugi continues. “I want you to be happy. There’s nothing wrong with me being angry you were made sad, but there’s also nothing wrong with wanting Marik to be better, with recognizing that his actions might have had a purpose behind them. I think… I think that’s probably good, actually. Recognizing what is wrong is definitely good. Does that make sense?”

“Yes, Yugi,” says Atem. He looks away. “Thank you.”

Yugi thinks… Yugi thinks Atem is still hiding something, but as Jou coughs and shivers, and they keep on walking, they’re distracted by something else: a flickering green flame.

“Finally,” says a familiar voice, and a Marowak turns around in the snow. “We were waiting  _ forever _ for you bitches to get here. Honestly, you’d think the Guild would respond at least a little faster to a trap we set for you people— oh.  _ You. _ ” A snarl, in Atem’s direction. “Perfect. I’ll deal with you in a second. NINETALES! GET YOUR ASS OVER HERE!”

“You know,” says another familiar voice, “holding back both a Mega Salamence and a legendary bird at once isn’t that easy.”

“I got the bird almost entirely by myself, thank you!” shouts Marowak. He smiles, and taps his bone against the ground. Suddenly, the frost around Team Millenium melts as horrible flames lick a circle around them. The fire seems to  _ howl _ as it spreads into a circle around them. Yugi steps away from the flames, bumping into both Atem and Jou as he does. Even Jou, the fire-type, must have been uncomfortably warm, but even here, as far from any of the walls of flame as possible, Yugi feels horrible, like everything inside of him is boiling. And the flames are howling, howling like the souls of the dead. The Marowak in purple, with flames on the ends of his club, grins viciously.

“I’ve been waiting a while for something like this,” he says. Then, Ninetales leaps gracefully across the dungeon from where he’d been waiting. 

“Bakura,” Ninetales says, almost scoldingly, before looking at Yugi apologetically. “We’re both very sorry about this,” Ninetales says, “but we did need you all to get here, and trapping your Guildmaster was the fastest way to do it.”

“I am sorry for jack shit,” Marowak clarifies.

“Team TK,” growls Atem. “It’s you.”

“Well, it’s sure as hell not the weird bug guys that were beating you up last time I saw you,” Marowak says. “Honestly, you’re  _ wimps _ , being beaten up by that team.”

“Shut it,” snarls Atem.

“You were beaten up by bugs?” asks Jou.

“It’s a long story,” Yugi says. He should feel more afraid, with the howling, ghostly flames surrounding them. However, the expression Ninetales is giving Yugi is oddly comforting. It makes Yugi think that, maybe, Ninetales is about as likely to attack as Yugi is, and Marowak and Ninetales seem to hold each other in pretty high regard. He feels confident enough just… bantering with his friends as a result.

“Anyway,” Ninetales says, “now that I’m not over there, keeping up the Blizzard, it probably won’t be too much longer until your Guildmaster regains consciousness? He’s very strong, after all. It’s just, well, I’m an ice/fairy type. Unfortunately, I was the worst possible matchup he could have faced, he didn’t know to prepare for me. He was prepared to debate with Articuno, not get into a fight with me.” 

“What do you want with us?” growls Atem.

“Right now? That pretty thing around your neck.” Marowak tosses the artifact that Seto had been bringing back to Articuno in the air. “That and, like, I want everyone here to know that I am enjoying this  _ so much _ .” He sweeps his club across the air, and a blast of fire flies in all of their faces. Jou knocks over Atem.

“Get down,” he hisses, and tries to let his Flash Fire take the fire. However, he still ends up whining through burns.

“My fire,” says Marowak, “burns with more than just  _ flame _ .” The flames howl again. “They burn with a people, waiting for their revenge.” Then, flippantly, Marowak steps forward. “Honestly, I’d really prefer to beat you up worse than I’m about to.” The flames dance and scream. “You know what? You can fight back, even! Come on, get up!”

“Marowak,” says Ninetales, worried.

“No,” says Marowak. “Let them fight back. Go on! See what you can do!” Yugi turns to Jou, and they both decide in that moment that it’s not worth fighting back against someone who just beat Seto and a legendary bird in a straight fight. Before they can say that, though, Atem roars forward and tries to bite down on Marowak’s arm.

“Atem!” shouts Yugi, as Marowak dances out of the way, and the flames dance around them with him. Ninetales sighs, but looks amused despite his seemingly long-suffering expression. The ice-type jumps into the fight, carefully using his ice to keep the flames at a manageable level before engaging Yugi. Yugi looks away from where Marowak and Atem are fighting in order to fight Ninetales. The Ninetales raises his tails and a bright light burns at Yugi with the movement. Yugi doesn’t dodge the Dazzling Gleam, and instead barrels forward through it. “Stop,” Yugi says, “we should just talk this out!”

Ninetales pouts. “If Marowak gets to fight one of you, I want an excuse to see how you’re doing for once, you know.” He leans down and fires what seems to be an intentionally underpowered Ice Beam at Yugi. Yugi’s almost insulted, and fires back a Thunderbolt that would probably have matched the Ice Beam, had Ninetales actually been fighting at full power. Ninetales makes a delighted sound. For a moment, Yugi hears Jou come up behind them. “...you should help your friend Atem! Marowak’s a lot angrier at you two than I am.”

“Listen to him,” Yugi says reluctantly, “you saw those flames.”

“Yes,” says Ninetales, as Yugi swings his tail around, hitting the ground with a Heal Bell. Atem, behind him, makes an appreciative noise, so Yugi’s guess that he’d been burnt by now is probably correct. “Those flames. Marowak like him are rare around here, you know! Most Marowak evolve into the normal, ground-typed variety. But when he evolved, he was gifted and cursed, you know.”

“My entire family was murdered,” says Marowak, behind them. “They were murdered by  _ your people _ , Atem.” Yugi hears a sickening  _ thunk _ , and turns around to see Atem sprawled across the ground.

“Atem!” he shouts.

“Don’t turn your back on an enemy, Yugi!” scolds Ninetales, before Yugi is hit with a sudden freezing blast of air. It doesn’t do much more than freeze his legs and tail in place. Jou charges at Marowak, but is batted aside. Marowak reaches down to try to yank the necklace off of Atem’s neck.

Yugi notices it, then— Marowak… already has a necklace like Atem’s. It’s gold, with a strange eye on it, as well, but instead of a triangle, it’s circular.

“Fuck,” says Marowak. “Fuck, it won’t come off!”

“What?” says Atem.

“Oh,” says Ninetales. “It already picked him…”

“Picked me?” says Atem. “It was a gift from my father! And yours— yours is stolen! These are powerful symbols of Duality! They’re vital to the fate of the world! You have to give it back.”

“It chose him,” hisses Marowak. “Of course it did.”

“I… how long have you had that, Atem?”

“Since before I left to join a rescue team.”

“It only took that long.” Then, Ninetales does something unexpected. “Fuck. Maybe it really is fate, huh?” He turns around. “Sorry about this, Yugi.”

“Stop apologizing, it’s hilarious and they deserve it,” says Marowak. 

Then, ice encases all of their legs, and Yugi realizes that ice has covered Jou’s mouth, as well, so that he can’t breath fire properly and escape. “That’s mean, Bakura,” says Ninetales, pouting, as he shakes the frost off of himself.

“And you’re way too nice. Your fucking point?” says Marowak. The ghost-type looks back over them longingly. “You sure I can’t just kill them?”

“It’s probably better if we don’t,” says Ninetales.

“Why— what did we do?” says Atem. “What did I do?”

“It’s more the system than anything else,” Ninetales says. “Um, as a hint, you encountered the Hunters? Tell Yugi about Jirachi. Holding back on that will, um, probably get you killed?” Jirachi? What is a Jirachi Yugi turns to Atem, who is frozen in place. “Also, just… look up what your clan has done. There’s got to be a liaison in Waypoint Town who can tell you the Palace’s history.”

“Stop babying them,” says Marowak fondly, before shaking his head. “If they get themselves killed, good fucking riddance. You put up… a  _ good _ amount of fight, but honestly? Not seeing the appeal, especially when I totally fucking hate everything you stand for anyway. Nice talking to you. Come on, Ninetales.” Marowak then leaps into the trees, through what are meant to be the impenetrable walls of the dungeon, as the circle around his neck gleams. Ninetales shrugs apologetically.

“Sorry I couldn’t check up on you longer, Yugi. You’ve been doing well!” Ninetales leaps through the trees too, and then Yugi turns to Atem.

“…Jirachi?”

“I… I’ll tell you when we aren’t frozen to the ground. I promise.” Yugi kind of wants to know now, actually. But he can wait a little longer.

* * *

It takes seven more minutes for an incredibly furious Seto to appear, stomp once, shatter all the ice, and vow revenge on Team TK. When he’s told his brother misses him, though, he immediately forgets about that revenge, and that, Yugi thinks, is why he thinks he’s totally fine with following the frequently furious dragon.

Mokuba cries when they get back, and Atem sighs with content, and Yugi thinks:  _ I couldn’t regret any of this if I tried. _


	8. The Prince's Hope

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A prince does some thinking.

The rain doesn’t stop.

Seto is furious, but the clouds don’t move, and the rain doesn’t stop. Around town, the rumor is that it will not change because the artifacts that affect Duality haven’t been put back into place, that Team TK is stealing them from the places they’re supposed to be. But Atem isn’t sure about that.

Bakura said that his entire family had died. That takes up almost as much of Atem’s brain, too, but… first, he has to tell Yugi what had happened. With Jirachi. This isn’t a conversation he’s really… looking forward to? But it definitely needs to happen. So, while tired and full of dark feelings towards their family, themselves, Team TK, Jirachi, and everyone else that had caused this, he finally approaches Yugi. It’s night, and they’re in their room at the back of Grandpa’s shop.

“So,” Atem says, “Jirachi.”

“Jirachi,” agrees Yugi. “Wanna tell me about them?”

“Not really,” says Atem, “but I need to, don’t I?”

“Yeah,” says Yugi, “you really kinda do.”

“Well,” Atem says, “according to legend, Jirachi is a Pokemon that fell to earth on a star. They sleep for a thousand years, but anytime they wake up, they grant wishes. According to some legends, they do it because they like granting wishes, and seeing how the people happily react to the wishes they’ve been granted. However, according to other stories…” Atem pauses. “Well, they’re mostly morality tales. Someone manages to wake up a Jirachi, and they grant a wish for that Pokemon. However, because they’ve made the wish, things go horrifically wrong.” Atem sighs. “Then, it depends on the story, as to what happens next. In some stories, Jirachi reappears and undoes everything. In some stories, Jirachi explains what went wrong, and the Pokemon in question learns to live with their wish. And in some stories, Jirachi enjoys just… seeing the chaos their wishes create. They enjoy the control that grants them over the world.”

“Oh,” says Yugi. “…oh.” Atem doesn’t know what he’s thinking, just then.

“When you were unconscious, we met a Pokemon who introduced themselves as Marik’s Shadow. They were a Jirachi, though their colors were different from most legends of Jirachi. They kept their eyes closed almost the entire time as though they had been asleep. And they knew your name, called you their toy, and said something about you making a wish. About them exacting a cost. And they weren’t very kind. We left, but it felt… it felt like they were humoring you, and just letting you go like that.” Atem shuffles his feet and looks down. “I… I didn’t want to tell you. You were upset enough after finding out Team TK knew who you were.”

“I think I must have made a wish,” Yugi admits.

“I know,” says Atem.

“What do we do?” asks Yugi.

“I don’t know,” says Atem. He wishes he had a better answer. Any answer at all would have been better than the one he’d just given, but he didn’t have a better answer at all. Instead, they laid in bed for a while, just lying near each other.

“Not telling me was pretty shitty,” Yugi says, “even if you were trying to protect me.”

“I know,” Atem says, and he finds that he does.

“Not telling me was pretty shitty,” Yugi continues, “but at least you tried now.” Yugi stands up and walks across the room. Outside, wind howls. “Things are getting pretty bad now, aren’t they. But I think it’s going to be okay, as long as we stick together, right?” Yugi curls up in the bed, right next to Atem. “…I don’t know why, but I feel like I’ve known you all my life. You’re very important to me, Atem, even when you mess up.” Yugi carefully bops Atem’s side with his nose. “Whatever’s going on— with me, with your family— we’ll figure it out, okay? We just can’t hide things anymore. We have each other for a reason, okay?”

“Okay,” whispers Atem. “You’re… you’re too forgiving, Yugi.” Atem feels choked up in a way that he doesn’t remember ever having felt before. It’s chilly and cold and windy, but Yugi’s wool is warm.

Atem falls asleep.

* * *

Yugi and Jou want to come with Atem for moral support when he seeks and outsider’s version of his own history. He knows how he was taught it, and he was sure his tutors meant nothing but the best. However, just because his tutors  _ meant _ the best did not mean that they were the best. Maybe, maybe Bakura— Marowak— Bakura had been lying. Or maybe, Bakura had been telling the truth, when, before he’d hit him over the head with that bone club, he’d said:  _ I’ll never forgive you for my family.  _ Atem didn’t know. That was the scary part. Once, he would have dismissed it out of hand. Once, maybe, even if he had been told that, he’d have said that Bakura may have had some injustice done to him, but he’d attacked first, and he’d done far worse, so really, the injustice had been done by Atem’s ancestors and he had no need to find answers. No need to reach out. No need to do anything.

But Marowak was accompanied by the Ninetales, Ryou. Marowak was accompanied by a Ninetales who knew Yugi, and it wasn’t just that. It was also: those two cared about each other, and those two stopped each other from making mistakes. It was also: Marowak, for whatever reason, had wanted his necklace, had wanted revenge, but had let Atem go. He’d been  _ spared _ . Atem doesn’t think that someone who had  _ spared _ him could be all bad.

Atem doesn’t think that he could ignore that maybe, just maybe, it isn’t Marowak, or even Marik, who was in the wrong. 

Maybe it’s  _ him _ .

So Yugi and Jou offer to come with Atem, to offer him moral support for this, but Atem waves them off. The weather is  _ still  _ broken. Sometimes, at night, the clouds clear, but the sun almost never shines without someone who knew Sunny Day. As a result, the Guild is offering free Sunny Day tutoring to Pokemon like Jou, then sending them on specific missions to bring light to the world. How had the Duality gotten so horribly knocked towards darkness? The artifacts alone shouldn’t have been able to do that, but that’s why Atem wanted to know the secrets of his own clan. If he could learn what the Palace had done, maybe…

At the end of the day, he didn’t expect to be standing in front of Claydol, though. Claydol, who had always given Atem the creeps, who Jou had intentionally tried to keep away from Atem. That Claydol.

“I’ve been expecting you,” Claydol says.

“Have you?” Atem mumbles. “You’re… you’re our liaison with the Tower. Can you tell me my history? Tell me about the relic keepers… no.” No, because everything Marik had said, unfortunately,  _ fit _ . It was hard to say exactly how Atem knew, but he knew that nothing Marik had said was a lie. Marik’s words  _ fit _ in a way that Atem was scared of. Atem had been told, after all, that being a Relic Keeper was an honor, a lifelong commitment. You’d live where the relics were. You’d commune with legendary Pokemon. They were absolute servants of the crown and of Duality, and back when he’d been told that, it was a good thing. But now, it isn’t, and it is that simple (even if it is also not simple at all). Now, he found out secrets were carved into backs and that families could be unkind.

“No?” asks Claydol.

“No,” says Atem. “…no. Tell me about Kul Elna.”

The story, as Atem had heard it originally, went like this, back in the day: there was a rebellious village, and the forces of the Palace had stopped them from stealing all of the most important relics. In order to protect those relics, more relics were created during the battle. They were exceptionally powerful relics, those that could control Duality to an unprecedented degree. One was inherently connected to the Duality’s  _ light _ . Another was inherently connected to the Duality’s  _ darkness _ . The Pharaoh and his most trusted advisor would wield both, so that no village like Kul Elna could upset the balance of the world again. The necklace Atem wore was one such artifact. The other he’d be given once he had an advisor close enough that he thought he should share it with that advisor, that power, and using artifacts like that, they could keep the world in balance.

The story Claydol tells is…

“There was once a village called Kul Elna, and it was full of thieve. Now, the Palace thought of such thievery as an unforgivable crime. Unforgivable, even for a village of the poor, the tired, and the hungry.” Claydol is neutral in all things. His tone, his language, the way that every single one of the red eyes on his clay body gives Atem a searching look. “Now, your father, he wanted to solve the problem of the thieves. In those days, too, the Duality was moving in a strange way. The Sol and the Luna had appeared, and they were dangerous. No mortal Pokemon, however, could hope to contain either aspect of Duality, let alone both aspects of Duality.” As he says this, Atem thinks of the paintings, the statues, the art of the great Sol and the great Luna, and thinks:  _ it is true, that very little could contain beasts such as those _ .

“So,” Shaddi says, “one of his magicians decided that he could kill two birds with one stone. One night, while the world was sleeping, the magician killed the village of thieves. As he did, he wove a spell, a spell that could create two pieces of controlling gold. These pieces caused the Duality to recede to the balance it was meant to be in once more. And as such, all was well.”

Atem feels a little sick, though.

_ All was well. _

He couldn’t even tell if this version is any different than the one he’d heard when he first internalized the story himself. He feels woozy on his feet. All was well. All was well. “I see,” he says, trying to pretend his heart isn’t screaming at him.  _ All was well.  _ “And this is how the story goes?”

“That’s what happened,” Claydol agrees. “Can I see that necklace of yours?”

“Okay,” Atem says, and lets Claydol see the necklace. It’s something he says on auto-pilot, really. Atem’s head isn’t in the game at the moment. He’s still thinking about the horrible, matter-of-fact way that Claydol had said that the magician had killed the village of thieves. “You grew up in the Palace,” Atem says. “Why are you here?”

“Why, it’s where I knew I needed to be, Prince Shinx.”

“Don’t call me that,” Atem says, and for the first time, it doesn’t feel petty. It comes from some dark star deep in his heart. Don’t call him that. Don’t call him that. He won’t take it. Don’t call him that. That’s not his name, and he wants to use his  _ name _ now.

“But that’s who you are,” says Claydol. “Don’t just ignore your destiny, Prince Shinx. Embrace it. That’s what the world needs. Perhaps you should go home soon.” He hands the pendant back to Atem, and once again, it hangs safely around Atem’s neck. The weight to it is comforting.

“Yeah,” Atem says, “Yugi’s waiting for me.”

“Hm,” says Claydol. 

It’s only after Atem’s left to find where Jou is helping bring Sunny Days to crops that he realizes that, maybe, Claydol wasn’t talking about his home with Grandpa and Yugi and Jou at all. (It’s only been a few months, and there’s been a lot of drama, but they’re home. That’s what  _ home _ is for him. Atem knows, one day, he’ll have to return to the Palace. But  _ home _ is with Yugi, and Jou, and Grandpa and Honda and Anzu and in that small room in the back of Grandpa’s shop, curled up against Yugi’s soft wool coat. It’s a visceral truth. That is home. He is home.)

* * *

It’s another standard mission. Jou being a fire-type who could learn Sunny Day, as it turned out, put their team in high demand. This mission is near a farm. There, they grow apples and berries, the kinds of foods any Pokemon could eat. At first, the rain had been okay, but as time crept on and on without any sun, the farm had started to fall into disarray. Different teams with the ability to use Sunny Day had frequently come by, but a single use of the move couldn’t last forever

The sad Volbeat and Illumise who run the farm together give Atem a pleading look as their team arrives. “In part of our farm,” they say, “since last time any of you folks were here, a mystery dungeon has shown up. We’re gonna need help just  _ harvestin’ _ stuff at this rate.”

While Jou hangs a sun over the crops that were safe, Atem and Yugi walk into the newly christened Oran Forest. The ground is covered with fallen berries and apples to the point that both Atem and Yugi run out of room in their bag for them. The the forest is full of evolved bug Pokemon. Most of the Pokemon are easy for them to defeat— Masquerain, Butterfree, Beedrill, Beautifly and Mothim are none too intimidating after the missions they’d been on together, especially when all but the Beedrill are flying-types— but they’re an experienced rescue team. Atem has to wonder what the poor couple in charge of the farm will do.

When they leave the forest with their massive harvest, the couple are happy. Jou is yawning and wagging his tail and periodically calling the sun out again as he goes. Illumise says that, if they come back and keep harvesting things, they don’t have much  _ money _ to pay with, but they’ll gladly let Team Millenium take part of the harvest out of the forest. Atem quickly accepts. Free food is free food, and food can be surprisingly hard to come by.

It’s on the way back that he thinks about it harder. The Duality could not more clearly be out of balance if mystery dungeons were cropping up in places as orderly as a  _ berry grove _ . Mystery dungeons tended, naturally, to show up in wild and natural places— forests. Deserts. Natural cave systems. Places beyond the control of Pokemon. However, here, a mystery dungeon is creeping up into a berry grove, one of the most controlled-by-Pokemon places there could be. The sky is constantly dark and stormy, with no other sunlight shining down. Someone had pulled the duality out of balance.

Team TK— Atem frowns at the ground.

“Are you okay?” asks Yugi.

“Things are only going to get worse,” Atem admits. “That mystery dungeon will never go away now. And if mystery dungeons are swallowing even orderly, controlled places like a well-kept field, then mystery dungeons could truly pop up just about anywhere. I find myself… very worried,” Atem admits. “Do you think I should go back to the Palace?”

“I don’t want you to leave,” says Yugi. “I’m pretty scared of being without you.” The Mareep smiles then, though. “But if you think you’ll help more at the Palace, then go! If you want me to, I’ll come with you, or I can wait for you here with Jou.”

“Yeah!” says Jou enthusiastically. “We can be your advisors! I can tell you all kindsa stuff about fire and little sisters and Houndour packs, and Yugi can be all emotionally stable and stuff!”

Atem smiles. “Thank you, both of you,” he says. “I’m glad I have good friends who would do something like that for me. I don’t know if I can do good at the Palace, though. The world is falling apart. Is it because I left? But, the more I find out…”

Kul Elna.

“…the more I look at things with new eyes…”

Marik, taking out his revenge on the world for the terror that had been his past. His siblings, each trying to find each other properly again. 

“…the more I wonder if, going back, I can do anything right or good or helpful there at all.”

Yugi frowns. “I can’t decide that for you.”

“I know,” Atem says.

“I’ll be here, no matter what you decide,” Yugi says.

“I know,” says Atem. “Even if I decide I have to make this decision on my own?”

“Especially then,” Yugi says.

“Yeah,” says Jou. “I’ll be here, and I’d bet Honda and Anzu and even Grandpa will, too. We’re all your friends, you dumbass. You’re stuck with us.”

“Hey,” says Atem. “I resemble that remark.”

It rains as they walk back. Atem finally discussing his problems with his friends  _ properly _ for once instead of trying to hide them does not miraculously clear the skies or fix the problems that the world is facing. It doesn’t let the poor farmer couple farm their own farm. It doesn’t stop the three of them from being soaked and tired and ready to sleep by the time they manage to leave. Still, Atem’s fur feels a lot lighter.

* * *

He lies in the tiny room in the back of a shop with Yugi and dreams, his head carefully pressed against Yugi’s side. He’s not sure what he’s dreaming of. He thinks it might be whatever the charm around his neck really does. He thinks, maybe, he needs to see Marowak again. He needs to find that Marowak. Yugi might know Ninetales, too, and it doesn’t matter if they’re outlaws, he needs to see them again. That’s what the dream means. He needs to find Team TK.

He looks at Yugi, who has a face clenched shut. The other Pokemon’s legs keep on twitching. Yugi has said that he dreams of nothing but stars these days; Atem only hopes that those dreams guide him somewhere. Atem knows where his are guiding him.

He looks at the pendant around his neck.

He’d like to find Marik, or at least Isis, as well. They know more about artifacts than Team TK, or at least, he’d rather hope they do, given that they were all once  _ keepers _ of the same.  He’s not entirely sure that either set of the people he wants to find won’t just… kill him on sight, but he needs to make the attempt. For the fate of the world, but also, maybe, for just a few people. (Maybe those 'just a few people' were more important to his heart than a whole world could be.)

He curls up and goes back to sleep.

* * *

“No,” says Seto. “We need the mutt here, if no one else. To my infinite surprise, he’s managed  _ some _ modicum of  _ usefulness _ , and there are too many places that need him. I don’t trust him by himself, so  _ no. _ ” Atem’s not sure where the strange calmness he feels comes from, even as he hears Jou loudly growling at Seto from the background. “Honestly, at least  _ try _ to stick to your duties somewhere, instead of running off  _ again _ .”

“That’s what I’m doing,” Atem says. “The world’s falling apart. Let me try to take the mantle and put it together.”

“You’ve yet to evolve,” points out Seto.

“That doesn’t matter,” says Atem, “or at least, it shouldn’t.”

“I see,” says Seto. “And what do you two say?”

“I said I’d go with him,” says Yugi, “and I stand by that.” He smiles, softly. “So I stand by him in this. Honestly, I think it's loads better an idea than running on after Isis on our own was, anyway.”

“I think you’d better stop insulting us for no good reason!” Jou shouts.

“No good reason?” Seto says. “You… dorks… have done  _ nothing _ but cause trouble around here.” He pauses. “But… unfortunately for me, Mokuba likes you. Also unfortunately, you might be  _ right. _ ” Seto turns to look at them. “I get to keep Jou here.”

“Hey!” says Jou.

“No,” says Seto. “I get to keep Jou here. It’s basically a necessity that he sticks around. We don’t have enough Sunny Day users otherwise, and if he doesn’t stick around, I have to talk to  _ Pegasus _ , and that Wigglytuff annoys me on a  _ good day _ . I cannot imagine having to ask him to ship rescue teams from across the continent. However, you two? Fine. Go on your outlaw-chasing mission. If you get an answer, bring it back, and we’ll  _ use it _ .” The dragon thrashes his tail. “I don’t like it, but Team Millenium, here’s your mission: find the people who know shit about your fancy necklace, go save the world.”

“Thank you,” says Yugi.

“You’re making me stay here?” says Jou. “Fine, fine. I see where I’m not wanted.” He’s joking, though, Atem realizes after a moment, and he smiles at Jou.

“Thank you,” Atem says. Even if Seto rubs him the wrong way, thanks is warranted here. “Come on, Yugi. We should start at once. Things are already bad. I’m not sure how much worse they can get before things become irreversible.”

“I’ll send what other team members I can spare to the Palace,” says Seto, as they leave. “And on their own missions; there has to be  _ some _ sign of what to do now.” They’re almost at the elevator when they hear Seto say: “And come back, will you?”

Yugi turns around, but Atem does not. He gets the feeling that Seto doesn’t really want them to respond. Then, they head back down on the elevator to the mission room to get all of the outlaw information they can find that specifically mentions who they’re looking for, or even  _ might _ mention  _ something _ related, and get ready to hunt down Team TK or Marik. Eventually, they form a map of places to canvas. They wave their goodbyes to Jou that morning. They’ve packed every supply they could need. They’ve mapped out the locations of Khangiskan rocks. They’ve done everything they possibly can to make the journey as painless as possible.

Anzu and Honda come to meet them at the gates too.

“Give them hell, for the lot of us,” Honda says.

“We aren’t going to  _ fight _ them,” Yugi says, bemused.

“Yeah, well,” Honda says, “give them hell anyway, huh?” He almost looks… teary-eyed. “My best friends, off to save the world… what am I even supposed to say to that, huh?”

“You’re supposed to say, good luck,” says Anzu. Behind her, Atem watches as Jou comes up running, and he thinks:  _ this is home. I’m leaving now, but it’s home.  _ He thinks:  _ I don’t want to leave home behind, not forever, because home is where I belong. _

“YEAH! GOOD LUCK!” shouts Jou, and Atem hears Yugi laugh out loud beside him.

“Good luck!” says Yugi back. “You guys, good luck too, finding everything you need here at home! Good luck! Goodbye!”

“We’ll see you again!” says Anzu. “This isn’t goodbye, got it? Come home and tell us your adventures, like always!”

“We will,” says Atem. “We’ll come home, and when we do, we’ll tell you all about what happened while we were gone.”

Atem’s never felt so strongly like he should come home to someone before. Sure, he cares deeply for Mana and Mahaad, but there’s so many  _ expectations  _ piled onto his shoulders there. Every mistake that he made with Mana by his side was made with the expectation that as soon as he evolved, he’d be to mature for that, and that the escapade was teaching him things he’d use when he was king, anyway. Every lesson he learned from Mahaad was learned assuming that they’d be used when he was king, and when Madaad smiled at him…

…Atem had grown, though. Despite having run away and doing something everyone else thought was a bad idea at the time, he’d  _ grown. _ Once he was back at the Palace once again, he wondered what they’d think. Would he be a good king?

“Yeah,” says Yugi, “this isn’t goodbye.”

Atem thinks that, as long as he can ask his friends for advice along the way… yeah, he will be. He  _ will  _ be a good king. He has his friends here, and he isn’t doing this alone anymore. Together, Yugi at his side, he takes his first steps on the path to find the solution to all of this, to save the world. Together, Yugi at his side, they go forth. Together, Yugi at his side, and Jou at the rear, ready to join when he needs to.

He’ll be just fine.

* * *

It’s four days into checking each location on their map that, late at night, the howling winds stop, and for a single moment, moonlight shines down on their camp, and Atem knows that something is wrong.

Yugi makes a frightened sound in his sleep, and wakes up in a cold sweat, and they both step outside of their tent to fight whatever has awoken them. Framed by moonlight, there’s an Absol. And then, beneath her, green flames light up around them. They’ve found their target.

And suddenly, the charm around Atem’s neck gleams, and pulls down, and a light surrounds them. Distantly, he thinks he hears someone say something.

“Atem!” shouts Yugi

before everything goes dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whoops so this is a bit late
> 
> if there's anything i had wished i had time to write more of, it would have been more atem PoV chapters. this one is the one we get that's fully atem's PoV though, so at least there's one!


	9. The Shadow Realm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Atem and Yugi wake to face their demons alone.

When Yugi wakes up, he’s alone.

“Atem?” he says. “Atem?”

**“Oh no,”** says a voice nearby him. **“That’s not who I am. But it’s nice to know who your priorities are to. I can appreciate that.”** Yugi doesn’t recognize the voice, but he feels like he should. He scrambles to his feet. His hooves scrape against the ground, and when he looks up, he sees a Pokemon that is shaped like a star. He doesn’t have to have met them before to guess who they are.

“Jirachi,” Yugi says.

**“Oh yes,”** Jirachi says. **“Me.”**

Shadows drift around them.

**“Really,”** Jirachi says, ** “you’re ** ** _lucky_ ** ** I could manage to come with you. I have an affinity for shadows, see. If it had just been your ** ** _boyfriend_ ** **, you might be separated for good, and then, well, what could I even do about that? I have my own promises I’ve made. No matter how much ** ** _fun_ ** ** it is to play around with your lives— and it’s delightful, it really is— I do have my own obligations, Yugi. You all were taking such a long time. We were finally getting somewhere with Atem, you know. Or you were.”**

“What?” says Yugi, but Jirachi doesn’t seem to be paying much attention.

**“We were finally getting to the grand finale! Which, trust me, will be ** ** _worth_ ** ** all the waiting I’ve done to see the looks on your faces.” ** He makes a very irritated sound. **“But someone’s decided to rush along the game.”**

“Are our lives a game to you?” Yugi asks. It’s not so much an accusation as a genuine question.

**“Pretty much,”** says Jirachi. **“I never got a life of my own, so now, people give their lives to me. Pretty nifty, right, Yugi?”** Jirachi opens one eye and smiles, and it’s a wide, unnerving smile. **“You should remember pretty soon. A place like this doesn’t let you keep your memories hidden, even the well-hidden-away sort. Which is a ** ** _shame_ ** **, because I ** ** _wanted_ ** ** to drop the ending on you at the last minute! Well, whatever.”** Jirachi opens both eyes, then. **“Once, you were terrified of me, and now, you make wishes on me. Isn’t that just the ** ** _fucking best?_ ** **”**

“Who are you?” asks Yugi.

**“Apparently what appears in your nightmares.”**

“Where am I?” asks Yugi.

**“The Shadow Realm!”** says Jirachi. ** “Cheery place, right?”** Black clouds roll across unforgiving grey sands. **“You’re gonna be stuck here for a while too, probably. Unless you make it to the center, where you can get out, but that’s pretty well guarded. Oh, I bet you’re going to get beat up pretty badly.”** Jirachi yawns and closes his eyes again. **“The world goes by pretty fast when you’re a legendary Pokemon, but I was enjoying this. Honestly, Shaddi, do you really have to fuck everything up like this?”**

**“The Shadow Realm?”** says Yugi, feeling very out of his depth.

**“Correct, my dear vessel,”** says Jirachi. **“Well, not ** ** _my_ ** ** vessel, but, y’know, semantics. I was normally nicer about it to the other… two? Well, I wasn’t really nice to Marik, so it’s a ** ** _hoot_ ** ** getting along this time…”**

“I have to get to the middle? Will Atem know that?”

**“Oh yeah,”** says Jirachi, ** “but all your worst fears will show up on the way. Supposedly, this used to be a perfectly serviceable world like yours! Then that symbol of Duality you all love so much showed up and stole all the light, and, for balance’s sake, came back and stole away all the darkness too. All it left was ** ** _this_ ** ** creepy mess, right?”**

“I have to get going,” Yugi says.

“**You aren’t even going to ask me what you wished for?”** asks Jirachi, sounding very disappointed indeed. ** “Not even going to ask what I asked for in return? Not going to get all existential and upset about it? Ugh. I swear. For every moment that this existence is a reward for surviving, it’s a punishment for everything I supposedly did “wrong”. Like ** ** _self-defense_ ** ** and a little fun is ** ** _wrong_ ** **. ** ** _Fine._ ** ** Yeah, if you wanna see your oh-so-precious other half again, you’ve gotta get going, yeah.”**

“And you’re trying to delay me?”

**“Nah,” ** says Jirachi. ** “I could. But I want to see what you do at the end. I can’t find out what happens at the end, this time, if I keep delaying you. I’ve moved all the pieces around in this dreamworld of yours long enough, after all.”**

A dramatic pause.

**“It’s time to wake up, Yugi.”**

Yugi’s head hurts. He doesn’t want to _ wake up _, he just wants to find Atem. He knows these people know him, but he doesn’t care. He doesn’t care! He doesn’t need memories, he doesn’t need, need to know whatever his wish was, he doesn’t need Jirachi. He just wants to find Atem, and get out of here, and save the world. That’s all—

* * *

Atem wakes up, and it’s lukewarm and icy and burning all at once. He opens his eyes to grey sands and twisted walls, like a whole world turned to a mystery dungeon. The pendant he wears gleams, and it casts light on a place that is too grey to be light, but too easy to see around in to be truly dark. The wind whips and howls as it eats away at his coat. Grey sands eat away at who he is. He’s completely and totally alone.

He thinks that makes it darker than it already is.

“Yugi?” he cries out. “Yugi!” Yugi won’t answer, though. Atem’s read all the myths. This is, if his mythology is up to date, the Shadow Realm. He doesn’t understand how he’s gotten here. Opening a gate to the sealed-away remnants of a once-world wasn’t an _ easy _ task, to say the least, and it was well beyond most Pokemon. But Marik… he and the Hunters had stolen many relics. Team TK… they were thieves as well. They were notorious criminals, in fact. They’d been wanted for almost as long as Atem could remember.

And Atem is here, and alone, which means _ someone _ or _ something’s _ sent him here! You can’t just drift into the Shadow Realm on your own. Mana and Mahaad— they’d used legitimate magic, back when they were teaching Atem. They’d had to be careful. That was one of the things they’d taught Atem, in fact; when you’re using magic, you have to be very careful.

Mahaad had taken him aside. “Few Pokemon,” he’d warned Atem, “can use magic. It doesn’t just have to do with species of Pokemon; almost any species could, if they tried hard enough. It has to do with the mindset. Having the magic to use artifacts is one thing, but having the magic to make yourself into an artifact, well, that’s another. You need to have strength of will unparalleled. Without strength of will, you can’t bend the world around you as you’d need to in order to use magic. Without a strong heart to go with that strength of will, though, you might offend the legends that take care of the Duality behind us.”

“Yugi,” says Atem. “Yugi!” He knows Yugi isn’t here to answer. He _ knows _ . He stands up, feeling the sand that feels more like dust shift as he does. He has to start moving. Through the endless dungeon. Towards the center. He has to get to Yugi. He has to get to the end. Nothing else matters right now. Nothing else _ can _ matter right now.

“What if I’m not strong enough?” Atem had asked. “In heart, I mean.”

“Don’t worry,” said Mahaad, smiling. “You have us, and your father, and your father’s advisors. We won’t lead you astray.” The Mismagius hadn’t exactly ruffled his hair, but he’d done similar.

“Yeah!” says Mana. “Don’t worry. We’ve done all this stuff for generations!” The Clefairy giggles. “Besides, you’ve spent enough time around _ me _ that you won’t get all stuffy. So your heart and mind will be plenty strong!”

“Then why can I still not do _ magic _?” Asked Atem.

“Weeeeelllll,” Mana says, “it does come easier for certain Pokemon, like Pokemon who are ghosts, like Mahaad over there, or Pokemon who can learn Metronome like me!” Mana winks. “So if you’re having trouble with magic, just come talk to us! But you’ll get it eventually, I’m sure.”

“Yes,” Mahaad had said. “Your father was quite bad at magic. That’s why he had Aknadin help him properly cast spells and create artifacts.”

Atem banishes the memory and starts walking. Aknadin, who had killed a village. His father, who had authorized it. Who had to have known, or worse, did not know, and simply let Aknadin do as he wanted— but the way Claydol had told the story, his father had to have known. So much for listening to advisors leading to strength of heart. So much for _ anything _ leading to strength of heart. Instead, Atem had run away to be content.

Run away, and found out what a truly terrible ruler he’d likely have been.

What did that make him now?

_ Nothing _, whispers a voice on the wind, and he does not dispute it—

* * *

“You don’t have to _ follow me _, you know,” says Yugi. 

**“Yeah I do,”** says Jirachi. **“It’s far more entertaining, and this way, I get to find out what you remember, so I know what I still leverage.”**

“What I remember?” says Yugi. “But I don’t want to.”

**“Oh?”** says Jirachi, floating out in front of Yugi. **“You don’t want to? You don’t care who you were before?”** Jirachi peers Yugi in the eyes. ** “…you’re really quite different from your ** ** _precious_ ** ** other self, when he was in a similar position. You said you’d let him borrow all of your memories once, back when he was looking for his.”**

Yugi’s head really hurts. He keeps on marching through the sand. He would rather want Yami Marik to shut up, now. They were never quite this _ talkative _ before now, but however they'd been banished after their other self beat them must have messed with more than just the shape of their body. It must have messed with their head; while the voice and something about the face and the mannerisms was unmistakable, they didn’t _ act _ like the Yami Marik that Yugi remembered. No, Marik’s shadow had wanted them all pretty definitively dead, for all that _ this _ Marik seemed to just want to play around—

—what?

He stops where he’s standing.

**“Oh,”** says Jirachi. ** “You’re starting to remember.”**

“I’m… it just means Marik’s Shadow,” Yugi says. “I think I must just be translating, from all the wanted posters I’ve read.” No, it’s something like a memory, at the back of his head. Something so close to a memory that it scrapes at his skull.

**“You’re remembering me?”** Yugi remembers being high in the air. He remembers lightning, and being scared for— scared for— he’s not certain. A friend, struck by lightning, this Yugi can tell. A friend, who wasn’t standing up. He remembers darkness. He remembers a fight that he was forced to simply watch, where with every blow, some part of himself was taken away. It's a lot to remember all at once, and in all of it, Yami Marik was… the villain, Yugi thinks. A villain with a wicked smile, who wanted the world dead. Yugi takes a step back.

**“Oh, you are remembering me.”** They sigh. **“I’m not quite like that anymore, you know. I had my fun, got defeated by my own other half ** ** _surrendering_ ** **. Got banished away. I thought I was dead for good, and I bet you did too, huh.”** Yugi… isn’t sure. Now that he’s remembered _ something _ , the fog is all the worse. **“But, y’know, you can’t just… kill off, part of the balance of the world, and Marik was never exactly ** ** _balanced._ ** ** Besides, I never got the chance to ** ** _live!_ ** ** Of course, the destroyer of worlds being made a wish-granter… still yet to decide if it’s a second chance or a chance for the gods to have fun with my punishment. Here I am. The fallen star. The steelheart. ** ** _Jirachi_ ** **. They give legendary Pokemon like me multiple epithets, you know. Really makes me feel like a ** ** _god._ ** **”** They sigh again. **“For a bit, I really would have liked it, carrying on with all the killing and anger Marik didn’t want to deal with, but when you’re busy stuck in caves, outside of time, granting wishes… well it gets ** ** _boring_ ** **, right up until you develop your own personality. So I did! How do you like it?”**

Yugi… has no idea how to respond to that. “I think it’s better than the… very stabby personality I feel like I vaguely remember from before?” Probably only barely. (Yugi thinks that, maybe, someone would have had to be very _ lonely _ to end up like Yami Marik seems to have.)

**“Thanks,”** Jirachi says. **“…call me Jirachi, instead of Yami Marik. It’s my own name now, you know, one that doesn’t belong in part to anyone else.”**

“Okay,” says Yugi, and he keeps walking forward before pausing and asking Jirachi:

“You call Atem my other self.” A long pause. “In that memory, there was someone who looked very much like I’m supposed to, fighting you, except I called him the other me, and not his name, and he was… human. Like me.”

**“Yep,”** says Jirachi.

“But Atem’s not human,” Yugi says. “Not like me.”

**“Nope,”** says Jirachi. **“You need to remember… other things. And I bet as you go deeper into the maze, you’ll remember them. You have to. Because this is the Shadow Realm, and it never just shows you the things you actually ** ** _want_ ** ** to know.” **

At that, Yugi shudders. “Have you been here before?”

**“Oh, several times,” ** Jirachi says. **“You aren’t the first person who hasn’t really known what they were wishing for, and this is a quick way for the gods to show people like you how their wishes were a tad screwed up.”** Yugi feels a weight settle on his back. **“Do you mind if I ride here? I normally get to ride around on Marik’s head, but for obvious reasons, ** ** _he_ ** ** isn’t here.”**

“…sure,” Yugi says, not entirely meaning it, but not entirely sure he can _ stop _ the legendary steel-type, either. 

**“Thanks,”** says Jirachi. **“I probably won’t torture you as badly.”**

“…are you sure you aren’t just repressed anger anymore?”

**“Oh, no,”** says Jirachi. **“I’m mostly just ** ** _boredom_ ** **, these days, and getting to tag along as ** ** _you_ ** ** make an ill-advised wish? Why, it’s the most fun I’ve had in ages. So I might as well help you out here. Besides…”**

They trail off as the ground rumbles.

**“…oh, but not with this. You have to fight this on your own.”** From the ground emerges a Pokemon Yugi’s never seen before, and that Yugi’s strange patchy memory can’t identify. It’s almost like some kind of strange jellyfish, but it seems to be made of stone—

* * *

Atem jumps to the size, just barely dodging a kick as the— the— think, Atem, think, think about your lessons— as the _ Pheromosa _ turns around daintily on her legs and prepares to try to kick. Think, think, think. A bug… bug something, lived in the shadows between worlds, he’s supposed to know this, he’s supposed to _ know _ this is he wants to become king! He has to know things like this, since he’s going to become king, he can’t just _ not _ know them! He snarls and thinks. If it’s a bug, his bites aren’t going to do much anyway, so he needs to aim more lightning at it. Shit, and he’d been _ wondering _ why an entire world made of a mystery dungeon rarely had Pokemon in it! This must be why. 

Because after going through each maze of a floor, there were sparse Pokemon who might as well be the _ bosses _ of the dungeon. And a mystery dungeon could only sustain but so many of those.

A kick hits. Atem is thrown across the dungeon. He skids across the ground, but then gets up again. Funny, how a few months ago, a Roar that had sent him flying was enough to knock him out, but now he was tougher.

_ You haven’t evolved yet, though. Strength of heart. _

Atem roars, sending another Thunderbolt right at the Pheromosa. The Bug makes a terrible clacking sound. Come on; Atem can’t have to fight every Pokemon this hard. He’ll exhaust his ability to fight far too quickly if that’s the case. No, he has to take her down fast and hard. He scrapes his paws against the ground and, before Pheromosa can retaliate, charges forward with a Wild Charge. He feels the sparks that hit him with recoil, but the bug is finally knocked out, before dissolving into a fine mist.

It’s because he’s in the Shadow Realm. It’s only because he’s in the Shadow Realm.

“But what does this do?” he’d asked his father, after he’d gotten very sick.

“Your necklace?” His father had smiled. “It’s very important for maintaining Duality. Never take it off. When you’re older, I’ll tell you.”

As Pheromosa dissolved into dust, though, his necklace _ glowed _. You had to be careful with magic; you needed both a strong will and a strong heart. Did Atem really have either? Did he really deserve either? Did he really deserve anything at all? He had no idea. He climbs the stairs ahead. He has to get to Yugi, though. He has to get there, and that’s all that matters.

“Your kingdom,” his father had said. “One day, it will be your kingdom. I trust you to guide it well.”

But now when Atem thinks of his father, he thinks of the dead. He thinks of the things Marowak had said. He thinks that—

* * *

“No,” says Yugi, looking at the dust of the strange Pokemon. “I don’t want to hurt anyone!”

_ “I hate fighting and violence _,” a memory says.

**“You’ve gotten way better at it,”** says Jirachi.

“No, they’re, they’re supposed to be knocked out, and fine later. That’s how this works. I don’t want to hurt anyone. I don’t want anyone to get hurt!” He wants to sweep up the dust into the shape of a Pokemon again. 

**“How much do you do because that’s the way the world works, though?”** Jirachi asks. **“You know, they say this dungeon is endless, but there are barely any ultra beasts in it! That’s because they all like to live so far apart, but that’s also because nothing lives well in the Shadow Realm.”** Jirachi is still on Yugi’s back. **“These are the Pokemon that used to populate this realm. What are you remembering now, by the way?”**

This isn’t what he wants. This isn’t the first time he’s been in a fight he doesn’t want to win, though. Well, he’d sort of wanted to win— he’d thought it was best if he’d won— he hadn’t wanted to win, as much as it meant he could stand alone without his other half. Without _ Atem. _ So he’d won, anyway, because he needed to stand alone, and he had to win. It’s what he’d had to do. They’d basically agreed. Atem would move on. Yugi would stand without him. They’d both move on, they’d all move on.

Yugi stares at a doorway in his dreams and tries to pretend he’s moving on. He stares at Kaiba in a fight and tries to pretend he’s moving on. He stares at the world and tries to move on despite every part of him that never, ever wants to let go of that most precious person to him.

“…the end,” Yugi says.

**“I wasn’t there for that,”** says Jirachi, almost like they’re complaining. ** “Woulda loved watching you kill Atem, especially then. Probably, if time wasn’t wonky for me; watch them wait to let me see that until I’ve gotten a chance to be attached. Hah.” **Here they trail off too. Their voice is oddly flat.

Yugi doesn’t respond at first. He wants to say that he didn’t kill him, but as much as Yugi now remembers that battle in crystal clarity, and more and more, more and more clearly, he can’t say. He can’t say for certain that he hadn’t pushed Atem too hard, that he hadn’t driven him to the end, that by fighting when he had, that he _ hadn’t _ killed Atem. Atem just had to put down his sword; Yugi hadn’t needed to pick it back up again, had he, and used it to drive him through a door Yugi couldn’t follow.

Atem was dead and dust, same as the rock jellyfish that Yugi had just fought. 

Except here, he was alive. He’ll anchor himself with that. Here, he’s alive. A little awkward. A little uncertain. “He’s a prince here,” Yugi says, “not a Pharaoh. He’s still learning. He’s still changing. He’s still _ alive. _”

**“Sure seems that way,”** agrees Jirachi. **“Keep going, will you? Both with the memories and the path forward. I want to get this over with—”**

* * *

“Just die already!” shouts Atem, but he doesn’t mean it. _ Guzzlord. _ What a pain. He’s fighting again. Nothing but fighting; that’s his duty. To fight for his people. His necklace still glows. What kind of people are they, anyway? The kinds of people who make things like this? He can’t even take it off properly, apparently, not even when it’s being taken by the one person who probably has that right! 

_ You don’t have that right. _

The Guzzlord goes down eventually and Atem is left panting. “How much further!” he shouts. He wants Yugi. He wants to go home. He doesn’t want to be king. _ He doesn’t want to be king of this. _ After everything he’s learned, he just wants people to be happy. He just wants to do whatever he can, and make people happy! But how is he supposed to in a system like this, where everything is in pieces?

_ You can’t. _

He can’t, he—

—but Mana, Mahaad…

“Sometimes,” Mana whispers to him, “I sneak out of the Palace. I’ll teach you the routes out of the desert, too, that way, when you go sneak out, to go on an adventure? You can think of me.”

“Sometimes,” Mahaad says, “being a mentor, I imagine, is like being a king.”

“How?” asks Atem, and Mismagius can’t actually stroke his fur, but Atem is filled with the sensation of that regardless. 

“Because sometimes, I don’t know if I can do anything right.”

And it wouldn’t just be them, either. Yugi and Jou had said they’d always help. He wouldn’t be alone. He _ couldn’t _ be alone. He can’t fight alone forever. Hadn’t he already decided that? That he wouldn’t be alone anymore?

_ But only you will be king. _

“Who cares,” says Atem, and he starts to run. He feels electricity in his bones. He has to get to Yugi. He has to get out of the Shadow Realm. He has to take this image of a world destroyed by the Duality out of balance, and use it to put the world back in balance. 

_ But you haven’t evolved yet _.

It comes back to that, doesn’t it? Only a _ Luxray _ can be king, and Atem is no Luxray. Only a _ Luxray _ is mature and strong enough to be king, and he’s not that yet. It doesn’t matter, though. It can’t matter, right?

_ You aren’t a king. _

He doesn’t want to be one, but he’ll have his friends at his side either way, so he has to run forward, down the next stairs, down the next corner, away from the shadows and towards the light. He has to get to Yugi. At the end of the day, Yugi is his… other half. WIthout Yugi, he wouldn’t be home. So, once he gets to Yugi, they’ll find out an answer together. And, well, even if they don’t—

* * *

Yugi stares. There, in the center of the realm, is a strange pillar of green flame.

**“Ohhh,”** says Jirachi, ** “that isn’t normally there. But that’s our ticket out.”**

Thank the gods, because Yugi didn’t want to be here a moment longer. He doesn’t want Jirachi on his back, weighing him down with the reminder of the wish he doesn’t remember. He hates how the memories make him feel like he should somehow have _ hands _ instead of the hooves he’d finally gotten used to. He _ really _ hates that, actually, because it keeps on making him trip and stumble as he attempts to walk through the grey, dusty realm he’s found himself in. It’s the strangest feeling, knowing he should be human. At the same time, in those human memories, he doesn’t feel human at all. Every time he looks at his hands, he feels wrong, like they should be harder and sturdier. Every time he sees the hair that he knows should be his, he thinks it should be curlier, and fluffier, and woolier. It’s _ nuts _.

Yugi hears a voice, from the green flames. It takes Yugi a second to recognize Ninetales’s voice, echoing. He can’t tell what it’s saying. He frowns. Ninetales. This world is a strange echo of the one he’s from; this world is a strange echo of everything, two steps to the left. Immediately recognizable, but wrong all at the same time. It’s awful. It’s also wonderful, but it’s awful. It’s awful because now that he remembers both, he can pinpoint everything that’s wrong, but wonderful, because so many people here seem to have found a slightly different path, and Yugi can’t help but feel those different paths are happier.

**“Let’s get going,”** says Jirachi. ** “Come on.”**

**“Come on,” ** says Yami Marik, in the memory. **“I cannot ** ** _believe this_ ** **. You, of all the people, are coming to me? You two?”**

“It’s you,” Yugi said, wringing his hands together. (It’s a memory.) Ryou, besides him, is staring, pale and drawn.

**“It’s me,” **agrees Yami Marik. They looks different than the last Yugi remembered them. They’re hanging in the air, and they’re not wearing a shirt. Strange tags hang from their hair; they have ribbon-like tails. Their eyes are closed, but there’s a third eye on their stomach that Yugi shudders to look at. It blinks and glances lazily around the room. It’s mostly yellow, but in places, it’s also red, and looking too long at it feels like looking for too long at a galaxy. It’s wide open, when it’s not blinking, and is also quite possibly both the most mesmerizing and most terrifying thing that Yugi has ever actually looked at.

“I was told,” says Ryou, softly beside him, “that this would summon a wish-granter. Some kind of djinn… I must have messed it up,” he says, sounding more fascinated than frightened.

**“No, no,”** says Yami Marik, ** “you didn’t mess anything up! You can call me Jirachi now.” ** They make a low, dark cackle. **“If you’re looking for me, though, things must be pretty dire. So tell me, how did things go around here while I was gone, huh?”**

In the memory, Yugi glances to himself, and to Ryou, and Yugi realizes that they both look exhausted. Their clothes don’t look great. He remembers Kaiba, leaving to find what he was looking for, and he remembers the line between living, dead, there and here being torn in ways it shouldn’t have been. He remembers that he and Ryou could have probably kept on fighting, that they’d practically done nothing but kept on fighting.

The thing about these memories is: since he has human paws in them, they’re so distant that they feel like they happened to another person. It’s like watching a movie more than like watching something that actually happened to him, Mareep. It’s probably a good thing.

**“…not great, huh.”** They smile, and it’s full of fangs. ** “Well then, I supposed you called me here to undo that? Because sorry, but no-can-do. I can’t turn back time quite like that. Still, go for it. Tell me your wish. ** ** _I look forward to exacting my price from you._ ** **”**

“I’m tired,” Yugi says, and even from that distance, Yugi feels it in his bones. “And after all this time, I still miss him. Do you think I could meet him again, in some world where I won’t have to watch him die?” Yami Marik turns to him, still smiling. “What I want… I want… Atem to live, to get a chance to be really alive, just for a while, and get to see me again without the burden of having to figure out who he is.”

**“Is that final?”** asks Jirachi.

“It is,” says Yugi.

**“I’ll take your destiny for myself in return,”** they say, ** “and your ** ** _boyfriend_ ** ** will get his second chance at life. Now, sleep Yugi, and don’t wake up again.”**

Yugi stares, entranced at a simple wish. The circumstances are blurry. Every memory of his past life is blurry. But the wish is crystal clear— he wanted Atem to live, to get to live and be around Yugi without pain. Without burden. So Yugi had his memories taken away, so they could meet again as teenagers again, and smile, and so Yugi could take on that burden himself. But the fact that he’s here… The fact that Yugi’s here now meant things were irrevocably changed. It meant Yugi’s destiny was in a legend’s hands. It meant all of their destinies had shifted.

It was probably what had lead right to this, because that was the kind of dramatic irony that Jirachi would love.

He turns to try to face the Jirachi on his back, and he does not see the Kartana coming—

* * *

Atem sees a pillar of green flame. He recognizes it; Marowak fire. Was Team TK coming for them, or sealing them away? It didn’t matter. It was a way out. All he needed first was Yugi. Up ahead, he saw the shape of another enemy. Kartana; a strange, metal, folded enemy. None of his attacks would be very effective, but that was okay because he was _ near the end _ , and so his attacks could _ afford _ not being very effective. He ran up to try to take on the Pokemon.

So he saw it, the moment everything went wrong.

_ You’re never fast enough. _

“YUGI!” he roars as the Kartana hits Yugi, hard, with the blade. Yugi sinks to the ground and does not get back up, as blood starts to leak out of his fur. Atem can see him breathing. He can’t see Yugi doing much of anything else, though. So Atem shouts again: “GO AFTER ME INSTEAD, YOU BIG METAL BLADEHEAD!”

The Kartana turns to Atem, and Atem lets electricity keep on sparking in his bones and _ charges, _ landing a Wild Charge in an instant. The enemy Pokemon seems only barely phased, though. Atem roars again, hating how hoarse and desperate his voice is starting to sound. He needs his roars to be intimidating. Kartana aims a Leaf Blade at him and Atem dances to the side before landing another Wild Charge. But each of the headfirst charges is causing recoil, and Atem doesn’t realize until a moment too late that _ Kartana isn’t being hurt badly enough by these for that to be worth it. _

_ You’re only good for charging in and attacking. Even with the team you’re in charge of, Yugi always did strategy. _

He dances around another Leaf Blade before trying to aim a Thunderbolt, but the Kartana has wisened up, and starts dancing around Atem’s attacks as well. For a few rounds, they both just hurl attacks at each other that go wide due to dodging or dodge attacks that prevent either of them from really hitting. Atem’s furious, and Yugi is hurt. He can vaguely see Yugi move out of the corner of his eyes, but only barely. It's the slightest of stirs. 

_ He’s hurt because you weren’t fast enough. _

Atem aims a swipe at Kartana. He falls off-balance.

_ You don’t want to be king, you aren’t good enough to be a partner. You don’t want to avoid your duty, but your duty might be wrong. Tell yourself what you are. _

Kartana aims a blow, and this one aims true. Atem is too exhausted to continue, and his vision goes black.

_ You’re not strong enough alone. You never have been _—

No. He refuses. 

The reviver seed Yugi had let him hold for them all that time ago cracks as Atem falls, and then Atem feels his eyes opening again.

_ You don’t have to be alone. _

Thunder aches in his bones.

_ He don’t have to do things like the people before you. _

A roar that’s lower and more powerful than anything he’s made before sits in the base of his belly.

_ Tell us who you are. _

Atem roars, and the thunder comes down. It strikes him when he stands.

_ He’s Atem. He’s Atem, and no one else. No duty drives him. It’s his decision where he goes. _

He feels his limbs stretch, but no, that alone isn’t enough. Strength of will, strength of heart, but also he needs strength of body. He’ll need it, when he steps out of the shadows.

_ He’s Atem, he’s Atem, and no one else, and he’s not alone. _

_ Good. _

Strength of heart, strength of will. Lightning strikes him, and he pulls on every part of himself. He’s not meant to evolve? He doesn’t care. He’ll make himself an artifact. He’ll use his strength of will, but his strength of heart too. He _ will _ be different. He _ will _ change things. He _ will _ stop his precious people from getting hurt. And he _ will _ be a king the world can be proud of. He _ will _.

Lightning strikes, and Luxray emerges.

With a roar, he’s surrounded by that lightning, by that Thunder, and then he rockets forward to use a swipe of his claws to drag Kartana out of the air. Thunder comes down again. The Kartana swipes at Atem, but the Kartana isn’t real, is it? Not here in the Shadow Realm. It’s just one more manifestation of everything in the back of his head that was stopping him from reaching _ here _ . Even if Kartana _ is _ real, well then, it’s chosen the wrong Pokemon to mess with. He can feel fire ignite in his mouth. Like _ Jou _. He’d taught himself the move watching him, and now, he can actually use it, flames licking around his head. He bites down.

Steel and grass. Kartana melts in his grip before going limp and turning to dust. Atem makes one long bound over to where Yugi lies alone on the dusty ground. Carefully, he flips Yugi onto his back. Yugi fits there now. That’s going to take some getting used to, but these paws, it feels like he was made for them. The flames call.

He makes one more bound, right into the pillar of flame, Yugi on his back. There, together, they leave the Shadow Realm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so like, this is the coolest chapter in the fic, that's it, it's all downhill from here,
> 
> but no seriously i had atem's evolution in mind from the VERY BEGINNING of writing this and i'm still happy that it turned out as well as it did. also, this chapter has the highest concentration of "yami marik the jirachi", which is, without a doubt, the weirdest pokemon choice i have in this fic. that's kind of on purpose; as yami marik says, it just kind of happened to them. weird.
> 
> how it happened in planning: i knew i needed a creepy jirachi, and originally that was an oc. i didn't have yami marik anywhere in the fic. i realized the creepy jirachi and yami marik actually fit pretty well. things clicked from there.


	10. To The Tower

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone walks to the end of the world.

When Yugi opens his eyes, he’s just about ready to immediately close them again, because he’s pretty certain he must be dreaming again. After all, that’s the only explanation for seeing both Ninetales and what appears to be a Luxray, both equally concerned and protective. But no— after closing his eyes and rather thoroughly trying to wake up again, he’s just left feeling gutted by the hazy, wavering memories in the back of his head. And they’re both still there.

“You’re awake,” the Luxray says in Atem’s voice, and, _ oh. _

“You evolved?” says Yugi. His voice comes out quiet and hoarse. “You evolved… twice?”

“It’s unusual,” Atem confirms with a small smile. 

“Why is Ninetales here?”

“Rude, Yugi,” says Ninetales. “Especially after me and my friends here were the ones to get you out of the Shadow Realm.” A small pause. “…I’m glad you’re okay.”

“I’m… glad you are too, Ryou,” Yugi says, and Ninetales winces.

“Oh,” says Ninetales, “you remember everything now, huh?” Nine tails swish, one by one. 

“Not really,” says Yugi. “I just remember a lot of fuzzy details.” He kind of wants to nuzzle up against Atem and ignore as many fuzzy details as possible, actually. Just pretend he can’t remember Atem, as a human being, dying. (Jirachi had said, in the memory, that he couldn’t make a change to time; Yugi wondered what all of this meant. Echoes of the people Yugu and Ninetales had known. Should he even ask Ninetales? Apparently they were working together now, so asking Ninetales wasn’t totally out of the question or anything… But…)

“Oh,” says Ninetales. “Well, that might be for the best…”

“So,” Atem says, “you really did know Yugi before all of this. You know what memories he’s missing. And you aren’t going to tell him what they are.”

“Yeah,” says Ninetales. “That’s about the long and short of it, honestly. I need to go check on Marowak again, I just… I wanted to be here when my friend woke up.” The expression Ninetales wears is more _ sad _ than anything else. Yugi doesn’t know what to make of it. “Is that really too much to ask? Um, I’m… my partner. I need to make sure he’s okay. It took a lot out of him, getting you out of there…”

“Alright,” Yugi says. “…thank you for being here, with me, Ryou.”

Ninetales smiles, pained and sharp but still oh-so-genuine. “I would never do anything less for you, Yugi.” He starts to walk out of the room on quiet, delicate feet. “…and, if you’d really want me to tell you more of your memories, I will. But I don’t want to hurt you, and… and I need to attend to my partner, first. He’s… the reason why, you know?” The fox Pokemon sweeps out of the area, then, out of the tent Yugi’s just realized that Atem’s commandeered for them.

It is, at least, one of the tents they’ve brought with them. That makes it feel more comfortable, even as Yugi feels the bizarre dissonance of his memories at last eating at the back of his head. “So,” Yugi says. “Teaming up with Team TK, huh?”

“I figured it was time,” Atem says. “…no, it was less that. They saved us from the Shadow Realm, and we got a chance to talk, after I got back here. It wasn’t just them, either. Apparently, Marik’s family is all here. It’s really the end of the world, isn’t it? All or nothing, Yugi.” Atem’s smiling oddly.

“…they don’t seem the compromising sort,” Yugi says.

“Well, it turns out we had help. Look outside,” he says, and Yugi looks. For a moment, Yugi assumes the help must have been _ Jirachi _ — after all, Jirachi had been there with him in the Shadow Realm, mostly just watching, but he’d been _ there _ . Now that they were no longer in the Shadow Realm, it would make sense for Jirachi to be the one pulling the strings. But, well, Atem wouldn’t have been smiling if it had been Jirachi. Atem didn’t _ like _ Jirachi, after all. So he looks outside.

Outside, Isis smiles at them, softly and a little sadly herself.

“I’d forgotten that I’d seen an Absol as we’d gotten here.”

“Yes,” Atem says, “well, it was pretty easy to forget, especially since Absol are _ known _ as creatures of ill portent. It’s entirely possible it just seemed a sign of the Shadow Realm to come, rather than a friend.” Atem pauses. “Apparently, she and Team TK have been talking to her brother.” Atem pauses and awkwardly shuffles his feet. As a human, Yugi remembers Atem’s tendency to awkwardly fidget when he ran out of words to say. As a Shinx, the feet shuffling had been like a cute and bumbling cub. As a Luxray, it came across as a motion almost too _ small _ for his large frame. It was _ adorable _ , even as it pointed out to Yugi just how much _ larger _ than him Atem was now. He had to be at least three feet taller than Yugi… “Apparently, Marowak and Team TK have never wanted the world to end, either, and as furious as Marik was at me for asking, he was… willing to share for Marowak and his sister’s sake. I didn’t argue.”

“Well?” says Yugi.

“There’s a dungeon that only a relic keeper can open, or at least, that only a relic keeper has the ancient knowledge to know how to open. From there, Marik, Isis, and Rishid have determined that we need to take my and Marowak’s necklaces to the peak of the dungeon— the Obsidian Tower.” Atem sighs. “I have been trying to figure out how to put this in a letter to Seto since I found out. See, I don’t think we’ll have time to go back and tell him in person.” Yugi considers.

“And at the top of the tower?”

“…Duality will be its most broken there,” Atem says, “and at the top, there will be a guardian. A guardian who must have decided enough was enough with our world. Will you come? Will you come to face the guardian with me?”

“Always,” says Yugi. “Although it is funny that we’re going with outlaws. I can’t imagine the people around the tower will be very pleased with us.”

“Yes, well,” says Atem. “It’s near the Palace. If they aren’t pleased with us, then I’ll make them willing to work with us.”

“Oh yeah,” says Yugi. “I guess they really would have to, wouldn’t they?” He smiles, then, at Atem. “…thanks for getting me out of there. I know you had to have helped too; Jirachi sure wasn’t going to do anything, judging by how they were talking.”

“Jirachi?” asks Atem.

“They were there with me,” Yugi says, a strange sinking feeling in his gut. “Did you… not see them?” 

“There was no one with you, Yugi,” Atem says. Yugi tries not to shudder.

“Right,” he says. “Well, that’s not creepy at all.” The two electric-types glance at each other, and then, almost without warning, Atem starts laughing. Yugi glares. Laughter, really? What had he done to deserve being _ laughed at _ , huh? But then Yugi starts laughing too, because he realizes what Atem’s laughing at is less him and more how _ stupid _ this whole situation is.

Outside, the wind is howling. It isn’t raining anymore, but clouds cover the sky. And for a moment, Yugi thinks he sees a ground that is covered in a pale grey dust.

It’s the beginning of the end. He may as well laugh while he can _ now _, right?

* * *

Apparently, Marik has connections, and some of those connections can send mail. Atem’s written a letter to Seto, but Yugi feels something sharp in his gut, and writes his own letter as they walk towards the desert again, towards saving the world. 

Marowak keeps on glaring at Atem like he doesn’t actually trust Atem to pull it off. Marik is stubbornly staying away from the group, which means he mostly stays near Isis or Rishid as those two lead their party. At one point, Yugi’s pretty sure Marowak purposefully trips Atem, who is understandably miffed, but honestly pretty level-headed about the incident compared to how he’d been chomping at the bit to attack Marowak earlier. Honestly, he seems pretty chilled-out, which goes well with Rishid’s almost gentle chiding of all of them when they forget to sleep, Ninetales’s strange, esoteric glances, and Isis’s steady march. Yugi just wonders _ why _ he chilled out so much. Evolution alone can’t do that much, can it?

If it can, can _ he _ evolve? Because every time they stop. Every time they stop, Yugi remembers more. Every time Yugi remembers more, he sees _ Jirachi _ , from where they're sitting on Marik’s head. He sees Jirachi, who, in turn, sees Yugi, who will glance back at Yugi with a blank expression. Yugi has no idea if they'd been a Shadow Realm hallucination or not. But he does know: what he got out of that trip _ are _real memories. They can’t be anything else. And those memories are such _ eerie _ echoes of what the rest of the Pokemon are around him that Yugi wants to _ scream, _ wants to shake their shoulders, wants to ask them if they feel deja-vu too. He doesn’t, because that would be impolite, but still. He _ wants _ to.

Instead, because Marik has connections, he writes a letter.

He’s not sure what to say, not when everything is sinking to the bottom of his guts like rocks, and what he writes feels more urgent than anything he’s ever written before. Once they get to a mountain, though, and Atem lets Yugi ride on his back to save his short legs, Yugi finally starts to etch the footprints down for everyone to read. As he writes, memories like movie reels play in the back of his head. (They’d been lost for so long, but now each and every one is easy to conjure at a moment’s notice.)

He says thank you to Grandpa. (He pictures a kind old man at a shop. He and Atem lived there, too. Except he thinks they were actually related? Grandpa sure had the _ hair _ for that. He was a very kind old man, though, whether they were related or not. Yugi’s pretty sure he gets kidnapped at one point? But more importantly, Yugi’s also very certain that Grandpa smiled at him. Grandpa smiles at him here, too, and offered a room in the back of his shop, so Yugi thinks, it’s almost the same. They aren’t related, but it’s almost the same, through a mirror sideways, at least.)

He says thank you to Anzu. (In this life, she was Jou’s friend first, which is funny, because Yugi remembers her taking months to warm up to Jou. She’d thought that Jou was a bad influence, or that he was trying to hurt Yugi, or any number of things. But Yugi supposes that couldn’t happen here, not if Yugi doesn’t get a past with other people. And he doesn’t seem to, here. That’s fine. He met Anzu differently. They aren’t childhood friends, but they are important. Anzu covers for them, but she also keeps track of where they belong. If Anzu wasn’t so important to keeping Waypoint Town running, he thinks that, maybe, Anzu would be right here with them, ready to beat up anyone who tried to hurt them. She would have in that other life, and even though neither Atem nor Yugi have known her that long here… Yeah. She would be willing to walk through fire for the people she cares about _ here _, too.)

He says thank you to Honda. (He’s always so level-headed about everyone but Shizuka, in this life and the last one. Sure, he’s an idiot who punches his problems sometimes, but he’s a level edge to Jou’s wild side. It makes sense that he’s the one to settle down and own a business, instead of being out exploring; it makes sense that he’s a rock type, because he’d always been more than one of their rocks. Here, he’d been a steady home, too. They all ate at his house for a reason. Besides, training in his dojo was way more efficient than training anywhere else around Waypoint Town. He’ll hold Jou back after he gets this letter.)

He says thank you to Jou. (They always save each other’s lives. In both lives, a wish brings them together, huh? In one, Yugi remembers a wish, and solving a puzzle. He remembers Atem, from that, but first, he remembers Jou, who would stand by him from then on out with a determined smile and a determined power. Jounouchi, thats his full name at home, though he was called “Jou” there too. Here, a wish let Yugi wake up, and a wish found Yugi in the same forest as Jou was. Yugi has no doubt that Jou would have gotten himself out of that eventually. Jou was the boy who pulled Yugi out of fires. Jou was the boy who nearly drowned to save one last precious person. Jou wasn’t the kind of person who couldn’t have _ eventually _ gotten out of the woods on his own, but one act of kindness can earn a boy’s loyalty for life in _ either _ life, and Yugi could not be more grateful.)

He stares at what he’s written as they walk, and he adds a thank you to the whole of Waypoint Town. (To the Kaiba brothers— no, the dragon brothers, because for all they are almost the Kaibas, here, here they’re _ dragons _ first, and gods, would the other Seto be beyond proud of that. For taking them in, despite Atem’s acid, Yugi thanks them. To Team Dinobug— honestly, both of their counterparts would be delighted to know they’d almost beaten Yugi in a straight fight, so Yugi can’t help but thank them for making that first mission as memorable as it was. To Mako, to— Persian? Otogi? He doesn’t know which to write— for doing their jobs, sure, but also doing them so well that neither Yugi nor Atem had ever had to worry. They had different jobs than the ones they’d had in Yugi’s other life, sure, but they were important jobs.)

Yugi pauses, and then he thanks Atem too. Unlike for the others, that’s all he writes— _ thank you _.

The letter he ends up with is more _ packet _ than letter, so he leans back on Atem’s back and watches as Marowak explains the next steps on the path to the future dungeon they have to reach like Atem’s an idiot or a small child who had never explored before in his life. Atem responds with some bite, but still that surprisingly chilled serenity. Yugi carefully shoves the letter in an envelope and slides of Atem’s back again. They’re over the mountain anyway. He walks up to Marik and Jirachi.

“Here,” he says. “You said you had connections. I know Atem wanted to write down where we were going, so that Seto didn’t kill us, but is it alright if you also get this sent to my friends? You know, before we all start to hike up the Obsidian Tower.”

Marik turns to look at Yugi.

“…please. I don’t… I don’t know if I’ll get to repay you.”

“Don’t know if you’ll get to?” repeats Marik, and it’s only then that Yugi notices the phrasing. _ Don’t know if I’ll get to _ . Oh. Yugi isn’t sure he likes what that implies, but he isn’t sure _ anyone _ would like what that implies he thinks. What that implies he _ knows _. But that can’t be right, right?

“…yeah,” Yugi responds.

**“Oh,” ** says Jirachi. **“You’re remembering even that now, huh?”**

“…Jirachi,” says Marik.

**“What?”** says Jirachi. **“I’d told you before that Yugi, specifically, was ** ** _my_ ** ** toy, and not anyone else’s.”** Jirachi pauses. **“…send the letter for him, will you?”** The rocks in Yugi’s stomach get heavier and heavier. He looks back at where Atem is walking. His best friend here, and his best friend then. Sometimes, the memories are close enough to the surface that it feels like Atem needs to be both at once, but most of the time, the memories are so hazy that, even if Yugi’s memories didn’t get hazier and hazier with each passing person and each passing day, even if Yugi thought he’d have much to…

“Okay,” says Marik, giving Yugi an odd look. “Writing you last will?”

“No,” says Yugi, and he doesn’t try to explain the feeling sitting in his heart at all. “Not exactly.” 

Jirachi watches him as he goes back to Atem, who is, by now, full-on arguing with Marowak. No matter how chill Atem had gotten lately, he remained somewhat easy to wind up, and once he was wound up he remained going relatively easily as well. He seemed to be almost enjoying the argument, the weirdo, but given that Marowak was now beginning to punctuate his points with bursts of flame and Atem was starting to punctuate _ his _ points with static, Yugi figured he should go ahead and go intervene. Before they, say, set something else on _ fire _.

He tried not to think about the letter too hard.

* * *

They’re walking through the desert, and Yugi can’t keep up. Absol and Ninetales both have wide enough paws to manage to walk across the sand easily. Atem’s past as a desert Pokemon makes life easy for him. Rishid is an _ Aggron _ ; he’s too _ heavy _ for the sand to matter. Both Jirachi and Marik can float. This leaves Bakura, who grumbles as he marches through the sand, and Yugi, who is even smaller than Bakura, and unlike Bakura, doesn’t have a past as a ground-type to make sand navigation at least _ somewhat _ easy for him. Add in that he has the shortest leg-span of anyone in the group, and it’s determined that he needs to ride on someone’s back again. Atem is about to offer when Ninetales says:

“Actually, can the two of us catch up?” He smiles winningly. “I promise I’ll be nice about it. We can make good time this way, and talk some without others overhearing.”

Atem and Marowak grumble simultaneously.

“Sure,” Yugi says, and he climbs up onto Ninetales’s back. It isn’t long until they’re pretty far removed from the others. There are clouds over the desert, but it’s still quite warm. Thankfully, Ninetales, the ice type, is quite cool to the touch, and is keeping Yugi cool as they cross the sands to the Tower.

“…do you know what I wished for?”

“No,” says Yugi. “Memories around then are fuzzy; I think it’s because things were starting to go so badly.” Yugi pauses. “Or maybe they just aren’t relevant. Most of my memories are a _ little _ foggy. I can’t remember if Grandpa is related to me, or how we found Atem’s name, or how I met you, for that matter. As far as I can tell, you were there one day, and then that was all.” Yugi tilts his head. “It’s a little weird, honestly, but I think that maybe, that’s the price? Of having come here, I mean. That my memories would always be a little fuzzy.”

“Oh,” says Ninetales. “I see. I never had any memory loss, but I think that’s because our wishes were different. You wanted a chance to become friends again; that was easiest if you actually had no memories, had a clean slate to become friends with. Me? I wished that someone would be there for him.”

(“I always wondered,” says the Ryou in Yugi’s memory, “whether or not he would have turned out _ differently _ if he’d had someone there to support him. So that’s what I want. If we’re going back, I want to be someone he can lean on. I want to be his support network, so he doesn’t have to pick the dark path again, not without someone there by his side.”)

“So, it made sense for me to remember. He needed an adult back then. Did you know that Pokemon are considered adults as soon as they evolve?” It’s a rhetorical question. With how Atem had desperately needed to evolve to become king, it was pretty clear to Yugi that yeah, he would and _ should _ know all about that. “He evolved then. At Kul Elna. The spirits of the Pokemon around him were so vengeful and so determined to protect him that he evolved into a ghost-type Marowak right there, instead of the ground-type Marowak his clan was known to produce. But you know as well as I did that he was a _ kid _ when that happened in our world, and he was basically still a kid here. So, it made sense for me to be a Ninetales, and not a Vulpix. And it made sense for me to remember, if I wanted to be able to help most.”

Yugi looks back. Atem and Marowak are arguing about something again. This time, though, it's in hushed tones. They’re heated, but controlled. For a moment, Yugi wonders what they’re talking about.

“It’s different for me now,” Ryou says, “than it was before. I imagine it’s different for Jirachi, too, since they're… well, you know.” A pause. “Getting along, I mean. It’s different. If I had to choose a way to remember any of this, it would be getting along like this, the real venom between us set aside because we’d all had _ someone _there this time to stop the venom in our hearts from getting too thick.” 

“I still don’t remember great,” Yugi says, “but I think it is nicer in some ways. And, as mean as Jirachi acts… I think it’s better for them too. If they really were in the Shadow Realm with me. We still can’t tell, but either way, I think everyone’s… happy, like this. Happy in this world.”

“…do you know the price of our wishes, Yugi?” asks Ryou. “I need— I need to tell you something, something I haven’t even told Bakura.”

“It was our destinies, wasn’t it?” says Yugi, but there are rocks in his stomach, rocks in his stomach, and when Ryou stops walking, Yugi screws his eyes shut and shakes his head. “No. No no no, I already know, don’t I? Now that I’ve been remembering, but even before, I’ve already known.” Yugi keeps his eyes closed.

“I’m sorry,” says Ryou.

“I already knew,” says Yugi. “I think from the beginning, I always knew I’d have to leave.”

“I’m so sorry,” says Ryou. “If it helps, I think that, if we don’t want to try to solve the imbalance in Duality, we don’t _ have _ to leave. If I’m correct, it’s the _ imbalance _ that’s keeping us here, not anything else. So maybe— maybe, if there’s some way, for it not to have to be us…” But before he can say anything else, he falls quiet. “No,” he admits. “It will be one of us, at the top of the tower, and Yugi, I think it has to be you. I’m… I’m so, so sorry, Yugi.”

“Okay,” says Yugi. “It’s a good thing Jirachi insisted I be able to send that letter. I’d almost think they care about me.”

“He might,” says Ninetales. “Who knows. They're kind of hard to read, what with always being asleep and all.”

“I don’t want to go,” Yugi says.

“Neither do I,” says Ninetales. “But I figure, we’ll both be there. Wherever we go, right? So I thought… I should try to catch up again. I’m not sure we’re really friends anymore. I’m sorry, I probably should have been less creepy phantom thief and more genuinely concerned about your wellbeing, but it was so much _ fun _ getting to act like that! Like, oh, like a mysterious oracle in a fantasy book!”

“It’s okay,” Yugi says. “I didn’t remember, anyway.”

He remains quiet on Ninetales’s back all the way the rest of the way to the Obsidian Tower, just listening to the ice-type breathe. It’s oddly comforting, listening to the ice-type Pokemon just… _ breathe _ . It’s a reminder that, even with what Yugi knows now, he won’t be… totally alone. In going wherever they go. Yugi thinks that, maybe, they might die— that would be ironic, right? Because Atem and Bakura had died in the end? Or maybe they’ll just go back to their own world, and have to know that there’s still a happier place somewhere. (Or somewhere Yugi thinks _ must _ be happier, given that Yugi had given it up to come here.)

Atem and Marowak have made some kind of hushed agreement, too, and they all walk along alone to the end of the line.

To the last adventure.

To Yugi’s last adventure with Atem.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One chapter and an epilogue left, now!
> 
> also, i can now officially say that marowak and ninetales are, of course, bakura and ryou. this was probably obvious but the characters in the story know for sure now! as such, id also like to share two pokedex entries:
> 
> "The bones it possesses were once its mother's. Its mother's regrets have become like a vengeful spirit protecting this Pokémon." (this is what sold me on alolan marowak bakura.)
> 
> "The reason it guides people all the way down to the mountain's base is that it wants them to hurry up and leave." (this made me laugh. because it sounds like ryou. too polite to tell someone to go away so...)


	11. The Goddess of Light

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's the end.

Marik opens the door. Yugi doesn’t quite see  _ how _ Marik opens the door, only to see that he does. He stands, shoulder-to-shoulder, with Isis and Rishid, and behind him, Jirachi hovers. The door glows in time with something like etchings on the back of Marik’s coffin-like body, and Yugi shudders. Cofagrigus was creepy anyway, but those carvings… they shouldn’t be on a Pokemon. Yugi didn’t know the whole story, but he could see how Atem looked away, something cold and strange to his gaze.

So it’s not just a Cofagrigus’s natural pattern at all.

While the door to the tower hovers open, Jirachi floats over to Yugi.  **“You know what you’ve got to do, right?”** the wish Pokemon asks.

“I don’t know,” Yugi says. “Defeat the legendary Pokemon at the top?”

**“Or convince them to leave this world alone,” ** Jirachi says seriously.

“Not even you wanna see the world burn, huh?”

**“Don’t be mean,” ** Jirachi says.  **“Where would I have space to play if I let this place burn? Once you’ve done your part, your fate is over. I’ll release you from that. You’ll have gotten your wish and your price. You can agree, right?”** Jirachi almost looks… somewhat distressed at this point, and Yugi can see why. Looking behind them, everything looks grey. There are strange shadows on the ground, like walls or bundles of wire, but also like the remnants of what could be. Like they don’t have much time.

They probably don’t. 

“I know,” says Yugi.

**“Good,” ** says Jirachi, huffing, before floating back over to Marik. (Yugi wants to wonder if in another life they’d be friends, but they’d both lived another life, and they’d been anything but that. Still, the end of the world could make for strange bedfellows, couldn’t it?) 

The door opens, Marik steps back. “…relic-keepers aren’t allowed in,” he explains. “Only those with some mark of Duality are supposed to be able to go in.”

“Well then,” says Bakura. “Looks like it’s up to us fuckers, huh?” Bakura and Atem step through the gate with no issue. Yugi watches them, then turns to Ryou. They’re going to follow after, of course, so before any of the others could argue, they both jumped through the gate as well. Yugi could hear Marik shout in the background, but he didn’t care. There was no circumstance where Marik’s worry would have stopped him, and anyway— he and Ninetales both knew that they were marked by Duality in their own way.

They stepped through the door. Nothing happened to them, but as they did, the gates closed again behind them. No turning back— not that Yugi had really planned on doing that.

“You followed,” says Atem.

“Of course I did,” says Yugi.

“You dumbasses,” says Bakura. “Come on. We have to move. The sooner we reach the peak, the less fucked up the world will be, and the safer it will be for  _ us _ to scale the tower.” Both his and Atem’s necklaces are gleaming. Yugi walks up next to Atem. 

“I’ll fight with Atem,” Yugi says quietly. “You and Ryou— you two are more used to fighting together, right? So we’ll fight in pairs, and the one of us who finds the stairs, you call the rest of us over, okay?” 

“Why should I let you strategize for me?” says Bakura, pairing up with Ryou. “We’ll split off into our own pair and hunt down the stairs. Come on.” Yugi watches, bemused, as Marowak and Ninetales walk off into the dungeon, Ninetales seeming to shrug almost apologetically. Yugi doesn’t really mind, though. He’d always gotten the sense that Bakura was the independent type. 

Besides, this gave him more time alone with Atem.

“I didn’t know you’d come,” Atem says, before pausing and adding: “I’m glad.”

“I’m glad too,” Yugi says. “I wouldn’t have wanted this mission to be something you’d do alone.”

“It’s going to be my most important mission yet,” Atem agrees. “…it might also be my last one. Now that I’ve evolved, it wouldn’t be responsible to continue staying away from the Palace. Besides, after all I’ve heard… someone has to change how things are run there, and since I’m the heir they’ll accept, it might as well be me.” For a moment, Yugi looks at Atem, and instead sees an amber-skinned man who shone like gold, a crown on his head, eyes piercing the night sharper than anything Yugi had ever seen. For a moment, Yugi is reminded of why Egypt thought their kings were gods.

“I think you’ll do marvelously,” Yugi says. “And even if this does end up being our last mission together, well then, I’m… I’m glad, that it’s still something we do together.” A Staraptor dives from the clouds, a Gligar chasing behind them. They both turn to do their parts. Yugi calls down Thunder on the Staraptor as, behind him, Atem Crunches the Gligar out of the sky. It’s a practiced motion. They both dance around each other easily. (This is something Yugi’s so, so glad he’s been allowed to get; the ability to dance around Atem as his partner in battle, instead of just the voice in the back of his head. No matter how much Yugi normally finds fighting distasteful, being able to fight side-by-side with Atem was quite possibly the best expression of how well they could read each other.)

(Yugi thinks that, in every life, they must click like this, two spaces that spun best side-by-side.)

“I’ll do well,” Atem says. “I’ll be king.”

“Look,” Yugi says, “the stairs. Come on, let’s get through this, so that you have a people left to rule over.”

* * *

The first sign of trouble is this: as the four of them make it up the next staircase, they’re just about ambushed by a monster house. There are four of them, so even after being surrounded by Pokemon, fighting  _ past _ the monster house isn’t hard. No; the sign of trouble is less the monster house and more that, immediately after defeating the last Pokemon in the monster house, the Porygon2’s beak starts to slowly turn to a fine grey dust.

“No,” says Yugi. “No!” He scrambles in his bag, but he already knows he doesn’t have anything that will get them out of this without injuring the other Pokemon. The Pokemon hasn’t totally vanished, though. It’s just slowly turning to dust. Behind him, he hears Bakura curse as whatever the Pokemon he was fighting was must also be suffering a similar fate.

“It’s starting,” Atem says grimly. “We have to hurry. If just the dungeon’s Pokemon are like this right now, imagine what any active exploration teams are going through.”

* * *

The second sign of trouble is how  _ large _ each floor of the dungeon is. Not only are there a lot of Pokemon to fight through, but there’s a lot of ground to fight through while  _ fighting _ those Pokemon. At first, this just means that the dungeon saps everyone’s energy quickly, but it’s also a sign. The Obsidian Tower might be taller than previously thought, or at least, take longer to traverse.

Part of Yugi, despite everything, is glad for that.

There’s urgency to this last mission. Pokemon they defeat all get a little dusty, and no one’s injuries are healing perfectly with the Oran Berries they eat. Clearly, things can’t stay as they are forever. It’s important that the mission is finished as quickly as possible, and for that, Yugi and Atem and Bakura and Ryou need to hurry to the top of the tower. As fast as they can, really.

But this is also Yugi’s last mission with Atem, and he’d rather not hurry because of that. He wants as much time with Atem as he can get. Yugi doesn’t want to leave his best friend behind.

The dungeon crawls ahead of him. Yugi walks beside Atem.

And in time, they reach what seems to be the peak of the tower. Except, it’s not the peak at all. It doesn’t take a genius to see that even though they’re high, so very high in the air, there’s another ladder, seeming to simply climb into the clouds. The tower keeps going. Somehow, despite the fact that to keep going it would need to reach beyond the heights of anything a Pokemon had ever built, the tower keeps going.

“This can’t be right,” says Bakura. 

“ **Can’t it?”** says two voices, and from the sky, around them, descend two Pokemon. Yugi takes a step back.

“Sol,” says Atem, and a gleaming steel lion growls. “...Luna,” says Atem, and a moonlit bat flaps their wings. Yugi swallows. Are these the legends they’re supposed to fight? But the tower isn’t done. They’d climbed many wide floors, but their hike up the tower isn’t done, it can’t be. (Yugi isn’t ready yet.) “You aren’t who I thought we were going to meet at the top.”

**“You won’t reach the top,”** Lunala says.  **“We’re here to stop any explorers from doing that.”**

**“I suppose you could say that we are your final obstacle,”** Solgaleo says.

“No,” says Bakura, “you aren’t.”

“What?” says Ryou.

“I need you to get my back,” says Bakura to Ryou.

“Always,” the Ninetales says, “but why?” Bakura turns to Atem and nods. Atem picks up Yugi by the scruff of his neck and flips him onto his back. Yugi yelps. 

“Don’t  _ fuck it up, _ Pharaoh,” Bakura says, and it hits Yugi that, in this timeline, in this world, this is the first time he’s heard anyone call Atem “Pharaoh” at all.

“I won’t,” Atem says, and suddenly, he darts towards the ladder. The two legendary Pokemon behind him charge forward after him, but not before a massive wall of green flame flies up between them. Yugi realizes it all at once. 

“Bakura! What are you– that could kill you!”

“GO!” shouts Bakura as Atem leaps to the ladder. “SAVE THE WORLD AND ALL THAT SHIT! Besides, we’ll be fine.” Yugi can almost hear him smirking. “After all, we have a pretty advantageous type matchup.”

The flames lick at Atem’s feet as he pulls them both up the ladder. The tower keeps on going. The dungeon’s far too big. And Yugi has, just now, seen the very last he will ever see of Bakura. He might have just seen the last he’d ever see of Ryou, as well. He feels his heart sinking. He should have said something. He should have included some words to them, too, in the note he’d written. But it’s too late now. It’s far too late to change a thing.

* * *

In hindsight, that could have well been the world’s most anticlimactic boss battle, because here they are, climbing the tower again. Behind them, Yugi could swear he hears the echoes of flickering flames. Yugi gets off of Atem’s back after a moment. The tower seems all the more solemn, now. There’s a thin layer of dust on the ground. The walls are lined with black crystal. Occasionally, light in a rainbow of colors refracts through the crystal as they walk by it, creating a strange, stained-glass effect. It takes Yugi a moment to ask:

“Was that what you and Bakura were talking about? Before?”

“...the one he stole,” Atem says. “He stole the half for controlling the  _ light _ , rather than stealing the half for controlling the darkness, like I’d assumed. We’re in a world that’s dying first by lack of sun; light is not our problem. So we agreed. If there were more guardians before we reached the peak, he would fight them, and I would go on.” Atem pauses. “I don’t know why he agreed to that, though. I genuinely think he hates me.”

“He doesn’t,” Yugi says, “not the same way as he could have, anyway.” A Skarmory attacks them. Some lightning clips its wings. In the distance, Yugi sees a Minior and a Venusaur approaching. “He probably still dislikes you, but the fact that he came this far… he wants to actually save the world this time too.” Yugi pauses. “I have to wonder if that’s part of what he and Ryou were doing as thieves.”

“They are pretty unusual as far as criminals go,” Atem admits. “Maybe they were.”

“I suppose I won’t get to find out,” Yugi says, a little forlornly. He hopes, after everything ends, that maybe he’ll wake up somewhere and Ryou, at least, will be with him. He hopes, but he’s not sure that what’s coming for him isn’t just  _ emptiness _ , deep and chilling emptiness. Yugi doesn’t want it to be. Oh, he doesn’t want what comes next to be emptiness, after the end. 

He isn’t ready. He isn’t ready.

It’s his duty, though. He  _ has _ to keep going. He has to keep walking.

“They’ll be fine,” Atem says, sounding only mostly convinced. (Yugi wasn’t talking about that, but the comfort is nice regardless.) “While Ryou is at a bit of a disadvantage against Solgaleo, it wouldn’t surprise me if Bakura could take down Lunala and Solgaleo both with almost no effort at all.” Atem sighs. “He’s a very strong Pokemon. Almost beyond belief, really. If that’s what being powered by the rage of an entire people does… well, I guess it only goes to show…”

Atem stops walking for a moment. His mouth fills with flame as he bites down on a Venasaur. At the same time, Yugi sends several bolts of lightning in the Minior’s direction, quickly breaking the Pokemon’s tough outer coat and revealing the strange Pokemon inside, and then taking down that Pokemon as well as he did. Once the enemy Pokemon are defeated, they turn back to each other.

“...it only goes to show how much needs to  _ change _ when I’m king.”

“You’ll be great,” says Yugi, watching as the Pokemon they’ve defeated are dragged down into dust. It’s going faster now. Yugi feels his legs shaking. Every ladder they climb up, he gets closer to what he knows will happen. 

He wonders if this is what Atem had felt,  _ before _ .

Before all of this, at the end, had Atem been scared too? He’d always seemed so determined, so certain, even as Yugi had killed him– no as he walked away, Yugi had only… only let him move on, or at least, that’s what Yugi was supposed to have only done, nothing more violent than that– and here he was. Here Yugi was, at the end. He hasn’t told Atem. He wonders if Atem knows. Maybe they should talk through it together, as they climb the tower. Maybe that will make Atem feel better, after it happens. He hopes that Ryou and Bakura, at least, are together when it happens. Two partners side-by-side, that’s always how this should end, together.

And yet, he still hasn’t told Atem what they’re marching towards.

“Are you okay, Yugi?” asks Atem.

“Yes,” says Yugi, and he is lying. 

He thinks he wants to spare Atem the pain. Yugi remembers Atem leaving. He remembers every agonizing moment of that decision. Now that he’s remembered it, he also remembers a lot of little things. He remembers thinking afterwards that he’d pressured Atem into it, that it was the end but that it hadn’t needed to be, that he’d missed him. That he wished he hadn’t played a direct part in it. That he hadn’t had to watch Atem’s back as he walked away. Mostly, he remembers how, before, Atem hadn’t even properly remembered everything yet, and sitting there wondering what they were going to be now that they were going to be apart. It was agonizing at the time. It had made that last duel as much an exercise in  _ pain _ as it was a celebration of their friendship, and… Yugi didn’t want that for Atem. He didn’t want the last tower climb to do nothing but remind Atem of the things that had hurt him. He doesn’t want to be the reason Atem’s hurt ever, at all, really, but if he has to…

“Okay,” says Atem. “I’m glad, because you’re kind of spacing out.”

“This is our last mission together, isn’t it?” says Yugi.

“...yes,” says Atem. “I’m still sorry. That I brought you on to a rescue team that would have to fall apart one day, thanks to my selfishness.”

“No,” says Yugi, “that’s not what I mean at all. I mean that I love you.”

“Oh,” says Atem. “I love you too. You know that just because we’ve stopped exploring together won’t mean that changes, right?”

Yugi swallows. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I know.”

In some ways, that’s comforting. In a lot of ways, though, that’s what Yugi’s afraid of most. That after all of this…

...that after all of this…

...bit by bit, Yugi starts collecting the words he should say, if he gets to say them. Bit by bit as they fight to the very bitter end, together.

* * *

And at last, they reach the peak of the tower. When they step out, their surroundings are totally grey. Not black, not white, but grey. It’s strange. For a moment, they’re totally alone, which isn’t, as far as Yugi is aware, quite how this is supposed to go. What’s  _ supposed _ to happen is that there’s a legendary Pokemon here for them to fight, and Yugi needs to be ready.

“...where’s… where’s Necrozma?” asks Atem.

“I don’t know,” says Yugi. “But we’re here to face them, aren’t we?”

“We are,” agrees Atem. “They’re a Pokemon with control over Duality. If there’s a Pokemon that can fix our problem, it’s Necrozma. So we’re here to face them. Except they aren’t  _ here _ . Where are they?”

“I don’t know,” says Yugi. Above them, strange colors start to glisten. “Atem…” says Yugi, before stopping, and starting up again. The words are lined up on his tongue. “Atem,” Yugi says again, “Atem, there’s something I have to–”

Suddenly, there’s a cry from the sky, and the colors all  _ combine _ into a shining crystal, and then, around the crystal, a great black Pokemon appears, and it somehow sucks all of the light out of the world around it. Yugi is shut up by the sight, and both Yugi and Atem step back.

“Necrozma,” says Atem, “Necrozma, I bring you a pendant that holds darkness. It’s my hope that you can destroy it, or otherwise use it to remove the imbalance towards the darkness this world holds.”

Necrozma doesn’t answer, but it holds out a claw, from which Bakura’s triangular pendant hangs. Yugi feels his heart stop.

“No,” says Atem. 

**“Yours,” **says Necrozma. Before either Atem or Yugi can even ask what that means, there’s a horrible light and a horrible shout through the air, and then a beam of powerful light screeches across the tower. Yugi and Atem both dodge to the side. Necrozma raises its head before aiming another bolt of psychic energy.

“I brought this for you!” Atem pleads, but even as he pleads, he gestures to Yugi, who plants his own hooves down. He feels dwarfed by the conflict, though. At least Atem is a Luxray; Yugi is a Mareep, a Mareep on his own, and not only does Necrozma seem a giant next to Yugi, but even Atem’s power dwarfs Yugi’s. They stand up together, though, and they prepare to fight.

It doesn’t last long.

Atem darts forward to Crunch down on Necrozma, but before he can reach the legendary Pokemon, Necrozma rakes Atem with its claws, and Atem goes skidding across the top of the tower. Yugi turns from getting ready to fight to desperately running towards Atem. Necrozma is faster. It hovers a clawed hand over Atem’s throat.

“WAIT! ATEM! NO!” shouts Yugi.

Necrozma slashes the claw down… and cuts off Atem’s necklace, taking it into its hand as well. Yugi reaches Atem. Atem isn’t moving. His chest is rising and falling, so if nothing else, he’s breathing, but he’s not  _ moving _ . Yugi shakes him. Behind him, Yugi can see: something bright. He shields his eyes and focuses on Atem, fishing out of his bag… no more reviver seeds. They don’t have any more reviver seeds. No, no, Yugi doesn’t want to do this alone, he doesn’t want to be alone at the end, he  _ doesn’t want to have to leave alone! _

The light grows too bright to ignore when Yugi hears the twinkling sound of what can only be an attack. Yugi throws himself above Atem’s body.

“WAIT!” he says. “Please, we don’t have to fight!”

**“You are here to save this world,”** says the great light being. The great light being. Ultra Necrozma, says one life of Yugi’s.

Horacite, says another. Necrophades, says yet another in the back of his mind.

**“But I am to destroy every imbalanced world of darkness. This world was always an imbalance. You and your friend are not meant to be here. This isn’t how this was supposed to go. None of this is.”** It’s hard to see any expression on the light being; she glows so brightly that Yugi cannot see her face, cannot see her facial expression, can only see four majestic wings and a crystal– or is it a woman’s proud face? He can’t tell. The light bends and changes around the light being.

“I know I have to leave. The things that are different about this world are me and Ryou, right? If I leave, won’t that fix it?”

**“No,”** says the light being.  **“It is still imbalanced. The Shadow Marik’s interference has made this world into a disaster. It wasn’t real in the first place. Or, rather, it is essentially only a could-have-been. It’s not worth dwelling on.”**

“Isn’t real?” says Yugi.

**“Don’t you think this has all gone too fast? No, there’s only one way this story is supposed to go.”**

“Why?” asks Yugi.

**“You don’t remember your own,”** starts the light being.

“Why does that matter?” says Yugi. “Why does it matter if it’s light or dark or imbalanced? And they prefer ‘Jirachi’ now, and… this world is real to everyone in it. It doesn’t deserve you leaving it to become a shadow realm. I know I have to leave.” He curls over top of Atem. “But just because this world isn’t the story as it was originally meant to be doesn’t mean this world  _ can’t _ be.”

**“You argue so hard for your selfish wish.”**

“Is it selfish if I don’t get to see it out anymore?”

**“Yes,”** says the light being.

“Well then, if not for Atem, or me, or Ryou or Bakura, then why can’t this world stay alive for the sake of Jirachi?”

**“That is still selfish,”** says the light being.  **“I had assumed we would fight, though, and that I would win, I’ll admit. I did not expect you to stand here and try to negotiate.”**

“No world is perfectly balanced,” Yugi says. “From what I remember, nothing about my old world was perfect either. People are happier here.” Yugi pauses. “And honestly, I’m tired of fighting. That  _ was _ me being selfish. Besides, I am a Mareep, and you’re… you. I probably can’t beat you. You beat Atem in a single swipe, and he’s the one of the two of us who is stronger in battle. I’m good at healing things with Heal Bell, and strategizing, and sometimes fighting too, but I don’t like it as much, so I haven’t practiced.” He pauses. “I do talk a lot, though.”

**“So you do,”** says the light being.  **“If you like to talk so much, then tell me a story. Tell me why I should spare this wish-broken world. If you do, I’ll let you go. You’ll have to leave, though. I will simply allow you the time to finally say what I interrupted you saying.”**

“Thank you,” says Yugi. “I always thought you were reasonable.”

**“Like this I am,”** says the light being,  **“but always remember that light and darkness are both two sides of the same coin. I have faced you before, and I was not reasonable then. Now, tell your story.”**

“Okay,” says Yugi, and he does not fight the last Pokemon at the end of their last adventure. Instead, he sits up at the top of the tower, sits down there, and tells Necrozma about every Pokemon that wasn’t important. He told Necrozma about the Volbeat and the Illumise from the farm. He told Necrozma about the Cascoon that he’d had to carry through a dungeon. He told Necrozma about every client he’d had, and the happy expressions they’d had, the frustration they’d caused, and the frustrations they’d  _ felt _ . He tells Necrozma about the unimportant Pokemon, because it hits Yugi then that they are just as important as the Pokemon Yugi had actually bonded with.

In many ways, they’re even more important, because they’re more lives that have changed here that had almost nothing to do with wishes and bad decisions at all.

He talks about his wish, and what he remembers, but he talks about Atem’s wishes too. He talks about Jou and Anzu and Honda, and every moment he felt grateful for them, even unable to remember what they were. He talks about light that streams through the tower onto Seto’s wings and of Mokuba’s slightly-mean spirited pranks, alongside the expressions they had as they saw each other again. He speaks of the strange joy of feeling electricity in your paws or the power of healing with your tail.

He speaks a lot of friendship.

Friendship is what it all comes down to, isn’t it?

As much as Necrozma hates how things have changed, Yugi talks of how in one life two kings had chased each other into destruction, and in another they helped each other climb to face a god. He speaks of every villain who chose to redeem themselves this time around, and every outlaw he faced that  _ hadn’t _ .

He speaks of being the one to make the sacrifice this time, and being sure he’d do it again.

He talks until his voice is hoarse, and he sits and he talks to the light being, and after a story that had seemed to never end, the goddess of light bows her head. For a moment, Yugi thinks she has made a different decision. Then, though, she spreads her wings wide. Atem gasps, his eyes slowly opening. Yugi slowly looks up as the light being spirals into the air, crystalline color following her wing flaps. The grey sky turns to a stained-glass patterns, colors twisting along behind the goddess of light.

“What?” asks Atem.

“Oh,” says Yugi. “She listened.”

The being of light spirals into the air and flies away, and Yugi is happy.

“Let’s go home,” says Atem.

“Oh,” says Yugi, and follows Atem, the words he’d meant to say now no longer lined up on his tongue at all.

* * *

He doesn’t have forever, though. Every step he takes makes his head feel lighter. There’s a staircase around the outside of the tower. He and Atem are walking down it together, but Yugi’s head is light, and each step starts to feel less and less real. He’s… he’s… he has to be ready now. There’s no other option, really, but to be ready now, whether he’s really ready or not. The words aren’t lined up on his tongue at all.

“Atem,” Yugi says as they walk. “Atem, please slow down. I can’t keep up following you.”

“I’ll pick you up,” Atem says. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to get ahead of you.”

“No,” Yugi says. He feels so lightheaded. “No, you can’t do that either.”

“What do you mean?” asks Atem, turning to Yugi and trying to pick up Yugi by the scruff of his neck. But it doesn’t work. Atem’s muzzle passes right through the back of Yugi’s neck, as though Yugi is already a memory and a ghost.

Yugi… wonders if he  _ is that _ . Already just a ghost.

“Yugi… Yugi, what’s happening?” asks Atem.

“We restored balance,” Yugi says, “or as close as we could get.”

“I don’t understand,” says Atem.

“Do you know what I wished for?” Yugi asks instead. The words aren’t lined up on his tongue anymore. He has to figure out what to say, before he runs out of time to say it. He has to  _ say it _ this time! He can’t leave Atem without saying what he’d never gotten to when  _ Atem _ had left. “My wish– my wish was so that, that me from another world, my wish was to see you again. To get to be friends, without you ever having to leave.”

“I don’t understand,” says Atem.

“...my wish was an imbalance,” says Yugi. “I’m sorry. I’ve been very selfish.”

“No,” says Atem. “No, please don’t apologize!”

“This whole time,” Yugi says, “I’ve just been trying to finally say goodbye. Properly. In a way that meant something real.” He looks down. “I really needed to. To say goodbye to you. So I’m glad I get to do that now. And I’m glad we made friends again. After everything, it’s nice, being friends in a new way.”

“I still don’t understand,” says Atem.

“I’m sorry this is sudden,” Yugi says. He feels lighter and lighter, and when he looks down, his paws are transparent. “I just– I’m sorry I had to do this to you. I’ve been very selfish, I know.”

Oh.

“You’re fucking right it’s sudden!” shouts Atem. “You don’t get to do this! You can’t– I can’t lose you!” Yugi’s eyes widen as Atem crouches down, desperately trying to reach Yugi’s eye-level once again. ”I can’t lose you, Yugi! It’s thanks to you that I’m anything at all, don’t you see that?”

“Don’t be silly,” says Yugi, trying his hardest to smile. “Now, stand up. A king doesn’t belong there, crying on his knees, does he?”

“No,” says Atem. “No, no, this isn’t right! This can’t be how this ends!”

Yugi steps towards Atem. He can’t put his hands around him, or do anything to comfort him. His hooves are increasingly invisible. He can’t see patches of his body at all. Instead, he just tries to rub his cheeks against Atem’s for a moment.

“Of course its not,” says Yugi. “Your story is just beginning. Smile for me, will you, Atem?”

“Okay,” says Atem, and he smiles. It’s watery.

“Thank you,” says Yugi. He’s vanishing now for certain, he knows it. “Thank you, goodbye.” Yugi stays smiling and stares Atem in the eyes, and he holds himself there, no matter how he feels about it.

He won’t let the last thing Atem sees of him be his back.

As he finally vanishes, he pretends that he doesn’t see Atem’s smile break and the Pokemon start to cry again.

* * *

Atem stands there, on the stairs, for a very long time after that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> only the epilogue left, which will be up shortly.


	12. Echoes of You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A Luxray pulls together who he is.

When Atem finally makes it down the stairs, he finds Bakura, limping. The expression on the Marowak’s face is something unlike Atem’s ever seen before. Atem imagines his own face can’t be much better.

They don’t talk.

Neither of them need or want to.

* * *

Marik is waiting for Bakura. He’s not waiting for Atem, but that’s okay. Entirely understandable. Rishid and Isis are both looking up at the sun, and Jirachi’s eyes are open. Bakura immediately goes to lean on Marik’s side; his limp was worse than Atem had thought, apparently. Atem wonders when they’d met. He’s glad, though, since he knows that Bakura won’t trust  _ him _ enough to lean on him.

No one asks where Yugi or Ryou are. Atem’s glad for that. If someone had, Atem thinks he probably would have given in and bit someone. Instead, they all stare quietly as the clouds clear, and Atem realizes that now, his head is clearer than it’s ever been at any other point in his life. Heck, it almost feels  _ ironic _ , how clear his head feels right now. Like some kind of bizarre, cosmic joke– even though Atem knows full well it’s just because the world’s in enough order to think again.

“You did it,” says Isis. “I couldn’t see that far, but you did it.” She quietly gets into a bow. “Thank you, Pharaoh.”

It echoes across the desert.

“...I hope you don’t expect any of the rest of us to fucking bow,” says Bakura.

“No,” says Atem, “not really.” He pauses. “...I’d appreciate it, though, if one of you went to the Palace. Tell them Atem sent you. That he’s evolved, and is coming home soon, but that he’s said to listen to you while they’re waiting for him.” He considers. “They… probably won’t choose to listen to you, but if they do anything terrible, I really will tell them my wrath. Besides, some of them will believe you, since I told you my name.”

“What,” says Marik, “like it's a secret?” Atem snorts.

“I have spent too long in the Guild… gotten used to using my name a lot. But I promise, in the Palace, having my name will seem really personal. News doesn’t travel there as fast. I mostly only knew as much as I did because I was, well, really into explorers, wanted to know everything I could about them and it showed.”

“I’ll go,” says Marik after a moment, “if my brother and sister are also going.”

“I’ll gladly go back,” says Isis.

“Where you go,” says Rishid.

“...why you?” asks Atem curiously.

“If they have to listen to me I can fuck it up,” says Marik, and Bakura  _ cackles _ . 

“Almost makes me want to go too. But no, I’m with the wind for a while here.”

“Almost makes  _ me _ think this is a bad idea,” Atem says, but he doesn’t actually say anything else. If anyone deserves to be a bad idea in the direction of the Palace, it’s these people, after all. 

“Where are you going then?” asks Jirachi.

“Home,” says Atem. “I need to talk to Jou.”

**“Ahhhh,”** says Jirachi, and then they don’t say anything else. Atem turns in the sands, and starts to walk home.

He waits almost an hour of walking before he starts to cry again. 

* * *

The Gateway Oasis is the only dungeon Atem runs across. While he doesn’t know the Obsidian Tower, he knows the rest of the desert well enough and the signs of mystery dungeons well enough to avoid the Desert Stormsurge (which will be a  _ delight _ to explore now that it’s cropped up) or one of the several entrances to the Endless Sands. So the only mystery dungeon he comes across is the Desert Oasis.

The sands of the desert have shifted over time, especially in this weather, so Atem can’t see exactly where Yugi was when he found him.

He steps into the dungeon, though. At the end of the dungeon, there’s a beautiful oasis, and in that oasis, there’s a beautiful fountain. And at that oasis, Yugi had first agreed to be on a rescue team with him.

Atem sits there for a long time.

* * *

He’s greeted back to Waypoint Town by a very concerned Honda. “You saved the world,” says Honda, “we’ve been waiting for you. Where’s Yugi?”

Atem is tired and sad.

“Ask… ask Jou to be there when I tell him. First. Before Seto.”

“Come on then,” says Honda.

“I knew you could do it!” Jou says. “But, uh, where’s Yug’?” Anzu’s there too, which only makes it hurt even more. Atem doesn’t know how he’s going to do this, how he’s going to say any of this. But he sits down and lines up the words in his mouth and says:

“Yugi’s gone.”

“What?”

“He’s gone,” Atem says, and then, bit by bit, haltingly, as Jou growls and whines and howls in all the right places, he explains. He explains everything he knows about what happens. And, partway through, a strange thing happens: he stops explaining what happens, and instead, he starts explaining how he feels. Tears come to his eyes for the third time that day, and this time, they’re desperate, choking things. One moment, he’s explaining, and the next, he can barely hear the sound of his own head. He can barely understand what he’s doing, but he’s sobbing, and Jou’s nose is pressed against his and Jou is crying too, and Anzu and Honda are pressed against them both, and gods, Atem doesn’t know how he’s going to tell Granpda, he doesn’t even know how he’ll keep on going, Yugi, Yugi, Yugi–

* * *

He keeps going.

* * *

Seto stands tall above Atem as he bestows on Atem the honor of having a mission complete on a high-ranked mission. He hands Atem a ribbon. It’s a rare ribbon, one that made it so even enemy Pokemon in dungeons were more likely to be friendly towards a person. One-of-a-kind, really. “I hate to give this to  _ you _ ,” Seto says, “but you saved the goddamn world, so it only makes sense you get a reward.”

Unlike the others, Seto doesn’t bother asking where Yugi is. Seto knows he won’t get a straight answer, or any answer, really, to his satisfaction. Atem also rather suspects Seto knows what Atem is about to say next:

“I’ve evolved into a Luxray.”

“So you have.”

“I need to go lead my people.”

“I just made you a senior explorer,” says Seto. “You’re just throwing that away now?”

“I have responsibilities,” says Atem, “duties.”

“And this isn’t your home anymore,” says Seto. “...fine. You go lead your people. Keep the ribbon while you’re at it. Next time you’re here, though, I’m dragging you through the highest ranked dungeon we have, you got it? And you’re going to face all of the enemies in it on your own, just to screw up your damn princely fur. Now get the hell out of here.”

Atem has trouble imagining that many days ahead right now.

* * *

Jou follows him from Waypoint Town back out into the desert. They pack to tear through every single mystery dungeon between Waypoint Town and the Palace, instead of the safe paths. It’s cathartic, fighting alongside someone who isn’t once an enemy, and while Jou isn’t Yugi, it isn’t like Jou isn’t a  _ friend _ . They fight through each dungeon in quick succession. Very few of them provide a challenge, and those that do mostly provide it by virtue of being home to far too many ground-types for a fire-type and an electric-type to take on alone. Despite this, the two of them make do.

Midway through the Desert Stormsurge, Jou and Atem sit down, and they have something like a heart-to-heart. It goes sort of like this:

“I miss him,” Jou says.

“Me too,” says Atem.

“Do you think he woulda wanted us to tell everyone about him? ‘Cause that’s what I’m gonna do. Scream his name at the heavens from beginning to end.”

“...yeah,” says Atem. “Yeah, that sounds good.” 

“Do you think we did that in the other world he said he was from? Shouted his story to anyone who would listen?”

“I hope so,” says Atem. “After all, if I were to vanish, that would be what I’d want.” Idly, he Headbutts a nearby Trapinch.

At the end of the Desert Stormsurge, they accidentally anger the boss of the dungeon with their own angry rampaging through his territory. The Flygon attacks them while side-by-side with two Swampert. It’s an ugly battle, with a lot of ground-type attacks being thrown around. At the end of it, though, Jou and Atem emerge, bruised up, cut up, quite possibly the most banged-up they’ve ever been after a victory… but they do, indeed, emerge victorious.

They tumble, laughing, out of the dungeon, right to the base of the Palace, and suddenly, Atem thinks that maybe he might be okay. For the whole fight, after all, he hadn’t thought of Yugi at all.

* * *

His coronation is unusually hasty. Part of that is  _ definitely _ Marik’s fault, who waves and vanishes the moment that Atem shows up. The Palace is in minor disarray, and… yeah, it’s definitely Marik’s fault. One of his father’s old advisors runs up to tell Atem that, for some reason, the people Atem had sent ahead, they kept on making up new rules as they went along, they ate through half the kitchen, they kept on stealing things, they gave one of the court magicians a heart attack, they officially ordered the relic keepers to get some sun, Atem, they ordered them to get some sun!

Atem smiles pleasantly. “Don’t worry. Me and my newfound advisor here will deal with that.”

“Thank goodness,” says the… particularly stuffy Batloy. Atem walked through the Palace. There are two people here, after all, that he’d left behind. Two people he really wants for Jou to get to meet.

“ATEM!” shouts Mana, and the Clefairy rolls right into Atem’s chest. “Oh, you really did evolve! Oh man, it’s been so boring since you left! I mean, at first it was hilarious, everyone was panicking, but then pranking the panicking people just got sad, so I was stuck being  _ so bored _ without you to go do things with. Oh, but now that you’re here you’re gonna have to be Pharaoh.”

“Don’t worry, Mana,” says Atem. “I’ll make you one of my advisors, and so then we’ll have all kinds of opportunity to mess around together.”

“Don’t encourage her,” says a Mismagius coming up behind her. “Do you know how hard it was to stop her from running off after you?”

“Mahaad,” says Atem, smiling softly. “I have quite the story to tell you, but first… have you two met Jou yet? You really ought to.”

It was only a few hours later that they crowned him. It’s supposed to be a loud and celebratory ceremony, but Atem lets the ceremony be quiet, because he doesn’t care so much. Jou is at his side, and so is Mana and Mahaad.

Atem tells them about Yugi too. Over and over again, he tells everyone.

* * *

“You said you’d do something about your messenger telling the relic keepers to get sun.”

“Yes, they can keep doing it.”

* * *

And life goes on.

Atem changes what he can. He knows the importance of keeping Duality in check, but he won’t let his kingdom fall apart. Sometimes, he leaves. He’ll leave Mahaad in charge and bring Jou and now Mana along as fellow members of Team Millenium back to the Guild, where he’ll have even more of an excuse to butt heads with Seto. He’ll take missions. 

Eventually, he sees Bakura and Marik again. They’d run across each other on a mission. Marik and Bakura had been together. The two of them had decided to see if they could beat Jou, Mana, and Atem to the goal of their mission. From then on, when the two of them were in the same place, Bakura and Marik tried to be as annoying as possible. Something like a rival, more than a criminal, though Atem could swear they were trying to be the criminals he and Yugi had once met them as all over again.

Sometimes, those missions will even go to places he’d gone with Yugi, and his heart would ache, because it always will ache for him.

But life… life goes on.

And Atem keeps on walking, because Yugi would kill him if he threw this away.

* * *

One day, a thief shows up in the court of the Palace.

“Bakura?” says Atem.

“Found Jirachi,” says Bakura.

“...yeah,” says Atem. “He’s with Marik. You practically  _ live _ with Marik. It can’t possibly be so hard to find Jirachi that it’s worth breaking into the Palace over.” (He ignores that Bakura finds that most things are worth breaking into the Palace for.)

“You know him?” says someone.

“Yeah, we know him,” grumbles Jou. “Unfortunately.”

“No, you fucking dumbass, we found Jirachi a cave that they're more powerful in. You know, like, _Jirachi_, all their Jirachi power and shit? They wants to show you something. Come on, lets go.”

“Okay,” says Atem.

“Is this a good idea?” says Mahaad. “He did just break in.” However, it’s more a token protest than anything, because Mahaad knows what Atem is looking for. Because if it’s Jirachi’s power, Atem just wants to take this moment to… he doesn’t even know. Hope, maybe. Because Atem… he’s been ruling, but he’s also been doing something else, too. He’s been searching, and so has Bakura.

* * *

**“You’re going to have to be really careful,”** says Jirachi, hanging upside down at the bottom of the cave. ** “You might even die! But back when Duality was all messed up, this cave ended up like this! And in it’s a hole. I can open the hole, if you wish for me too! You’ll have to walk through the Shadow Realm, and when you get to them, things might be pretty tough for you. I’m sure it will be utter torture.”**

“All we have to do,” Atem asks, “is make a wish?”

**“Yeah,” ** says Jirachi.

**“Make a wish.”**

It’s not a difficult choice, in the end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aaaand that's a wrap! this has been a joy to participate and write! i now conclude the most on-brand thing i have written in my life to wander back to wherever my brain takes me next
> 
> by which i mean "i'm super tempted to do a "ryou meets bakura again" fic sometime soon set in the same universe help"
> 
> ah, well, at least for _now_, the story's over...

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first time participating in a Big Bang, and it's been a blast! As per the rules, expect a chapter a day. I'll add the art in at the appropriate places soon!
> 
> If you wanna check me out on tumblr, you can find me at SheepySeconds or Sheepy-Token, the latter of which being my ygo sideblog.


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